


Like the Tide

by Deisderium



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: A Slow Amble Around Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Assassination Attempt(s), Bathing/Washing, Beach House, Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Violence, Complete, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, Found Family, Happy Ending, Loneliness, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Avengers (2012), Roommates Sort Of, Sharing a Bed, Tender Hand Jobs, This Assassination Attempt Is Not Going At All How the Soldier Thought It Would, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, deserumed steve rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:40:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 53,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22419409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deisderium/pseuds/Deisderium
Summary: There's no SSR anymore. It's SHIELD, now. The worst part is, it's named after him in some way, Peggy's idea of a memorial to honor his sacrifice. He hates the thought of it, because it makes him feel like a hypocrite. His shield was only ever a prop, not something to base an agency around.But he's been mythologized differently. They give him files to read on this thing that Peggy and Howard built, and his story is a part of it—or anyway, the story that Peggy and Howard chose to tell about him.It shouldn't matter; they thought he was dead. They never thought he would see what they turned him into.*In which Steve and Bucky never met, and Steve was always a USO performer instead of an actual supersoldier. The serum keeps Steve alive in the ice, but he wakes up the size he used to be in the 1930s, albeit healthier. Hydra sends the Soldier to kill Captain America, but somehow the Soldier can't make himself do it.Suddenly Steve is stuck with an assassin who can't quite kill him but refuses to leave him alone and the knowledge that Hydra is still out there somewhere.If you can't beat them, subvert them.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 542
Kudos: 872
Collections: Stucky Bingo 2019, Stucky: Canon Divergence





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bingo fill for the prompt "beach." It, um, got away from me.
> 
> I struggled with how to rate this. Most of the fic is a T-M, but in Chapter 6, there's some explicit sexual content, which i will mention in the chapter notes for those who'd prefer to skip. 
> 
> The fic is all finished except for some editing. There will be seven chapters, posting on Mondays. Hope you enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve wakes up.

Steve Rogers is an oversized, muscular supersoldier when he puts the Valkyrie down into the water, a product of Erskine's serum and Howard Stark's Vita-Rays. He has Peggy's voice echoing in his ears, and maybe,  _ maybe, _ if anyone had ever taken advantage of his fine tactical mind and trained his scientifically enhanced body, his skills would have been honed enough to get him out of the plane; but as it is, he's really just another showgirl, and the series of events that got him in place to defeat the Red Skull only showcase what a waste his USO career has been. Yes, he raised some money for the war effort, but it's not what he had in mind when he signed up for Dr. Erskine's experiment, and it wasn't what the doctor had in mind either. He knows that.

_ I hope, _ he thinks, before he shoves the controls downward with all his considerable strength,  _ that I have been a good man, anyway. _

He’s sad, of course, in those last moments, and scared; but most of all, he regrets. He had the potential to do more. He  _ wanted  _ to do more.

But it wasn't to be. As the sea waters come to cover him, his only funeral shroud, he heaves his wooden shield into place over his chest and thinks that at least he'll be with his mother again soon.

No matter what, he knows Sarah Rogers would be proud of him anyway.

*

Steve blinks himself awake in a white hospital room, taken aback by how complete the silence is. He pushes himself up, and his head spins. He doesn't know where he is, and he doesn't feel all that great. Not that he expects to; the last thing he remembers is waiting to die.

There's a window in the room, but the street scene that it overlooks is nothing more than a painted prop. Steve's not sure what it means.

He doesn't have much time to think about it though, because a tall, dark-skinned man in a leather coat with an eye patch over one eye strides into the room. He doesn't look like anyone that Steve has ever seen before in his life; he's never met anyone that wore that much leather or seen clothes cut the way this man's are.

"Sleeping beauty awakes," the man says, and Steve doesn't know what the hell he means by that. The man scans him with his single gimlet eye—the other covered by an eyepatch—and says, "Who the fuck are you?"

"Steve Rogers," Steve says hesitantly. "Who are you?"

"Steve Rogers?" The man's eyebrows lift and then he frowns.  _ "Captain America _ Steve Rogers?"

Steve blushes; he can't help it. By the end of his many USO tours, his feelings were more than conflicted about his on-stage persona. "Yeah, that's me."

"I got to say, Cap, you don't much look like your pictures."

Steve frowns and looks down at himself, and it's only then that he realizes that his t-shirt is loose around a narrow chest, not straining over the pectoral muscles that Peggy had hesitantly touched. He'd felt strange about that, even then, even in the middle of his vast wonder at his new body, a body that didn't always hurt, that he didn't have to fight against. He looks at his arms, the slight swelling of his bicep, his bony wrists and too-long fingers.

It hadn't even occurred to him that something like this could happen, because he didn't notice feeling bad the way he used to; he takes a deep breath, and the air goes in and out of his lungs easily. He's still seeing color. He can hear perfectly clearly out of both ears. He didn't notice that he turned back, because he hasn't turned all the way back. At least at a surface glance, it seems as though his long litany of ailments has not returned.

And for a moment what Steve feels is—relief. This is a body, this is a face, that his mother would have recognized if by some miracle she were to see him again.

The man in the leather coat seems to relax as Steve does his self-assessment. "I'm Nick Fury," he says. "No offense, Cap, but we're going to have to confirm your identity."

Steve snorts. "Sure," he says. "Where am I, anyway?" He's expecting to hear that he's on an army base somewhere, but honestly, he hasn't even started to think about where that might be. The fact that he's alive at all to be anywhere is still too overwhelming.

This Nick Fury does not look like a gentle man, but his voice is almost kind when he says, "New York. The future. You've been asleep for a long time."

*

There's no SSR anymore. It's SHIELD, now. The worst part is, it's named after him in some way, Peggy's idea of a memorial to honor his sacrifice. He hates the thought of it, because it makes him feel like a hypocrite. His shield was only ever a prop, not something to base an agency around.

But he's been mythologized differently. They give him files to read on this thing that Peggy and Howard built, and his story is a part of it—or anyway, the story that Peggy and Howard chose to tell about him.

It shouldn't matter; they thought he was dead. They never thought he would see what they turned him into.

But he's alive, and it  _ does  _ matter. He feels sick when he reads what they said about him. They made him from a symbol into a hero. He did one meaningful thing—and it was a big thing, that if he thinks about it in the dead of night, he can say to himself,  _ I stopped a monster, and then I stopped his bombs, and I didn't let that my life was the cost stay my hand _ —but, as if that wasn't enough, they have him running all over Europe fighting Nazis for real, instead of on stage.

_ That's not what I was, _ he wants to say, but there are seven decades of stories and comic books and memorials and movies that say differently.

Does it even matter, when he's not that man anymore? When the serum's sudden gifts have slowly leached away under the ice?

Although—not quite all of them, as it turns out. SHIELD runs a battery of tests on him, those first few weeks. It's easy enough to verify that he is who he says he is—his fingerprints are on file, for one thing—but then they want to draw blood, and have him run on a treadmill with electrodes attached to his head, his thin chest; they measure his sleep, what his blood sugar does after he eats, how many pushups he can do in a row. It's all very tedious, but Steve wants to know too, he guesses.

It turns out, he's still faster and stronger than average, although he doesn't think he'll be lifting motorcycles with three co-workers on them anytime soon, and heals faster than average, although not as quickly as he did. But he's not diabetic, and he can hear and see, and his spine is straight—none of his old sicknesses have left any mark on him any longer.

The SHIELD agents that escort him everywhere and the doctors that take his every measurement are all—conciliatory, he thinks. Pitying. They all think he should be sad for what he's lost; they all think that it's a loss. They don't understand that he was never that person they've been told he was. He was given a great gift, yes, and maybe if he had ever used it the way he had envisioned with Dr. Erskine—besides that one, last time—he'd have something to mourn.

They don't understand that after what he was permitted to be, this is a relief.

*

No one seems to know what to do with him once all the tests are done. They send him to a cabin by a lake with a lot of materials about what he's missed in history while he was under the ice. Frankly, much of it is appalling. Find some part of him is glad that he was never in the army for real; what would they have had him do, once the war was over? Would he have fought in every questionable conflict?

Good things have happened too, of course. So many people that were overlooked and dismissed when he was alive have more of a place at the table, even though he can see that it's not always an equal place. But his ma could have been a doctor now, one of many, and if he wanted to kiss a fella in the streets now, he could, as easily as he could kiss a gal. Not that he wanted to kiss anyone; right now, he couldn't imagine ever feeling happy enough, comfortable enough, to want that kind of closeness again.

They move him back to New York after that, to an apartment in Brooklyn that's furnished the way, he supposes, they're guessing would be familiar to him. Only it's a lot nicer than any of the places he ever lived, either with his ma, or after she died, when he had to make it on his own.

He wishes, wistfully, that he had one friend, even the kind of friends that he had made on the USO tour, people he had liked and liked to spend time with, even if they’d never been the kind of friend you spill your whole heart to. But he's never had that close of a friend, or anyway not since Sarah Rogers died.

But he can't classify the SHIELD agents that are sent to babysit him as friends. They're here to get him up to date; to relay, he supposes, their disappointment to Nick Fury when he turns out to really be no more than an actor, in the end, despite the fact that he defeated the Red Skull.

One of the agents introduces him to the internet, and he spends quite a lot of time looking up the SSR, and Peggy, and Howard, trying to figure out why they made him into something he was not. He doesn't find any answers. What he does find is that Howard has been dead for decades, but he has a son, a famous son.

And, as it turns out, Peggy is still alive.

The first thing he asks of his SHIELD babysitter—really asks, not like the requests for more books, or food, or a chance to stretch his legs and walk by himself—is to visit Peggy Carter.

*

The agent they send to escort him to Washington, DC, is not one he's met before. He doesn't know why they're even bothering with an escort, anymore; it's pretty clear to him that he's by no means a valuable asset. The agent is a petite redhead, even shorter than him, and much more dangerous, he can tell that much from the way she moves.

"I'm Natasha," she says, and doesn't offer a last name.

"Steve." He holds his hand out to shake hers. He figures she's read whatever file or dossier they have on him, but she doesn't comment on his being Captain America or anything.

Instead, she says, "Car or train?"

He didn't expect to have the option, and while he knows a car would be faster, the thought of sitting alone with this agent for hours on end while she scrutinizes his every word and reaction—well, it doesn't sound pleasant. At least on the train, they'll have to be slightly discreet.

"Train," he says.

"Fine," she says. "I'll have a car waiting for us in DC."

He's been on the subway, of course. It's the same and different to how it used to be, and sometimes he likes just riding, watching people, even though he doesn't have many places to be. He likes to take his sketchbook around New York, likes to draw the new skyline, likes to draw the old, like pressing against a bruise. He drew a lot on the USO tour, on all those long bus rides; he’d had to recover his skill to some extent after the serum, because while his hand-eye coordination was better than it had ever been, his hands were bigger, his fingers longer, and he’d had to relearn it. It’s the same now; he’s having to reteach himself what he’s already mastered. 

The train to DC isn't the subway, of course; but it's not dissimilar. Natasha doesn't comment when he pulls out his sketchbook and starts drawing, but she doesn't hide the way she watches his hand move, either, watches the people on the train around them come to life in graphite.

"You're good," she says.

"I was in art school, before the—before everything." He fills in a shadow under the chin of the man across the aisle from them, a man in a suit. He doesn't really know what kind of business people do now; computers and things, he supposes.

"Must have been a pretty big change," she says.

"I think you could say that of anyone who joins the army," he says, just to be a shit.

She laughs, unexpectedly. "Most people do put on some muscle at basic," she says, "but you really did it in a big way."

He smiles placidly, certain she’s looking for some kind of reaction, maybe expecting it to sting. He just keeps sketching, adding in the thin dark-skinned woman with the long braids on the other side of the businessman.

"Do you miss it?" She leans in, speak softly; creating a mood of intimacy. “Being strong like that.”

He thinks he knows what she's doing, but he decides to answer her honestly anyway. "No, I don't."

She raises one eyebrow. "Really?" and he hears every person who ever underestimated him when he was small, and gave him unearned respect when he was big.

He could say:  _ that body was a tool, but I never got to use it. _ He could say:  _ those muscles were a kind of armor, but they were never me. _ He could say:  _ I'd rather be as I am now than how I was made to be. _

Instead, he looks at her, not blatantly, but with an eye for the details that he would sketch if he were to draw her. He sees someone else who knows how to look like what people expect and be something else. "Well," he says finally. "I think there's value in being underestimated."

That makes her laugh again, her smile dimpling her cheeks. "I like you," she says, and she doesn't say  _ I didn't think I would, _ but he hears it anyway.

He shoots her a wry smile. "How'd you get stuck babysitting me, anyway?"

"I asked to do it," she says, surprising him. She waits a beat, just long enough for him to draw breath to ask for more, and adds, "It's not often someone like me get the chance to meet Peggy Carter."

He laughs, as she meant him to, and it's only later that he'll think to wonder what she meant by  _ someone like me. _

*

Here's the thing: in Steve's memory, the memory of only few months ago, Peggy is dark-eyed and glossy haired, the only person who thought he could be more, even if it never happened. And now—she's gone and lived an entire life without him. And that's—it is what it is. The two of them were only ever a dream to him, and that dream never happened. He always wished that it could have; but now he's so angry about what she and Howard said about him that that's not even a fleeting thought in his head. Besides, he tells himself, before the car deposits him and Natasha at the front door of the nursing home, she had a life. A life of her own, a life over seventy whole years, and that's something he can regret for himself, but not for her.

But when he sees her, whatever anger he had falls completely to the side. She's not the young woman that he remembers, although he can see the memory of her in Peggy's face—she's someone else now. Someone changed by seven decades that, no matter how many books he reads, he'll never really access the way she did, by living through them.

The room she’s in is a room for an old woman; the curtains half-drawn across the windows are gauzy and diffuse the light. The shelves are covered with knick knacks and framed photographs, some in color and some in black and white. There are books with leather covers, tattered paperbacks, and recent hardbacks stacked on the bedside table and on bookshelves throughout the room. The furniture is all done in light wood covered in pale blue and eggshell in floral patterns. Also on the bedside table are amber vials of medication, lots of them, and a pill case where they can be sorted by morning and night and day of the week. Something cracks inside his chest at the sight of it. 

"Hello, Peg," he says, sitting at the chair by her bedside. Her hands are pale and age-spotted, her hair mostly white. She's still beautiful to him, but it's a different kind of beauty, not the beauty of potential, but the beauty of promise fulfilled. She hasn't even spoken, and his eyes are already prickling, hot with tears.

"Steve?" Her voice is full of wonder, and he's not sure if it's just how you sound in the face of a miracle, or if it's dementia, or whatever they call it now.

He takes a deep breath, aware and suddenly grateful for Natasha's presence behind him. "It's me, Peg," he says. "I was asleep in the ice, but now I'm here."

Her hands take his, soft and paper thin, but her grasp firm around his fingers. "Are you real?"

"That's what they tell me," he says.

"I never thought—" Her fingers dig into his painfully. "I never thought you could have survived, Steven, or I would never have—I took liberties. I shouldn't have."

"It's all right, Peggy," he says. As he says it, he finds that it's at least a little bit true. "No one could have predicted this." He waves toward his smaller body and sees her squint toward it, as though she doesn't notice anything different from the last time she saw him. He both wants to say something, and doesn't.

"I should have, though," she says ruefully. "I should have."

Steve finds that this is the very last thing he'd like to talk about, so instead he looks on the bedside table. There are framed photographs: a wedding, children, graduations, a black-and-white photograph of a group of men, all in uniforms, though none from any particular army, with Peg at the center in her dress greens. Her commandos, he recalls; although he can’t place all of their names at the moment, she’d told him enough about them, once upon a time. They look young and at the same time, far away—the same age as him, or thereabouts, he supposes, but in a place he remembers but can never return to. 

He doesn’t like this train of thought. He doesn’t want to miss the war.

He picks up and then puts down the framed picture of a younger Peggy in a wedding dress with a tall, handsome man that he puts a name to, now that he thinks about it: Gabe Jones. Peggy had told Steve so much about him, and he guesses now he knows the reason why. They're surrounded by five children in the next picture. Steve picks it up and leans forward, angling the frame toward Peggy.

"Tell me about them," he says. "Tell me their names."

And Peggy does.

*

"That's not quite what I expected," Natasha says on the train back to Manhattan.

"Yeah," Steve says. He's got his sketchbook out but he can't think of a thing to draw. "Me either."

*

To Steve's surprise, Natasha comes back. Four days later, she shows up at his apartment, tells the agent on duty to take a hike, and says, "Steve, come on. I can't believe they're not giving you any training."

"I'm not sure what you think all this computer stuff is." Steve waves a hand at the IT itinerary that the baby agents have been slowly introducing him to.

Natasha snorts. It's the most natural sound that Steve has heard from her, and it makes his shoulders relax at least an inch.

"Yeah," Natasha says, "that's what I thought. You and I are going to go to the gym and spar."

Steve tries to raise an unimpressed eyebrow. He's not as good at it as she is. "I'm not that guy anymore, Natasha. I never really was."

"I know." Natasha grabs his upper arm, gives his bicep a squeeze. "But I know what to look for the way no one else does."

"I don't really know what you mean," Steve says helplessly.

Natasha worries her lip between her teeth, then sighs. "You were right, what you said," she says. "We're small, and people do tend to underestimate us. I can show you how to take advantage of that."

Steve lets himself think about it, lets himself take in the thought of training his body to do what he’d wanted it to, way back when the serum had first had its way with him. He lets himself entertain the thought of being, for the first time in his life, a little dangerous. 

"Okay," he says. "Thank you."

Natasha smiles like a shark closing in on prey.

*

Two weeks later, aliens invade New York.

It doesn't start with aliens, of course, or at least it doesn't start with an alien invasion. It starts with  _ one  _ alien, a man named Loki, spouting the kind of rhetoric Steve wishes he wasn't familiar with. Steve's not even supposed to be there, he finds out; but when Natasha asks him to come with her, it's not like he's going to say no.

"What the fuck is he doing here?" Fury says. They're standing on the helicarrier, Fury's collection of enhanced individuals: Natasha, Dr. Banner, Howard's kid, and Steve.

"We need all hands on deck," Natasha says.

Fury gives Steve a measuring sort of look through narrowed eyes, and Steve thinks that Natasha will probably be in whatever sort of trouble a superspy of her caliber can get in, but Fury just tells him not to get underfoot and Steve ends up clinging to a bank of machinery he doesn't know how to work like a particularly stubborn tick while Stark talks him through fixing the engine.

Things go tits up, of course. By the end of it, Steve is fighting an alien army in the middle of Manhattan. He's not as strong as he used to be, but Natasha’s shown him a thing or two and he can still shoot a gun, still see the patterns of a battlefield laid out in front of him, possibilities and probabilities rolling out in sparkling lines, aided by his eidetic memory—no one has ever taken advantage of his abilities, but Natasha just asks him like she expects that he'll know, and everyone follows her lead.

He manages not to get himself killed while telling everyone else where they need to be. And surprisingly, all of them accept it: Tony Stark, Natasha and her friend Clint, Doctor Banner who is also the Hulk, and Thor, a Norse god, apparently.

It's all a lot to take in, really, and Steve ends up hitching a ride on an alien surfboard with Natasha, climbing up to the highest point on Stark's tower.

Then there's yet another bomb, and Tony makes a sacrifice play that feels all too familiar, and then they capture Loki, and Steve doesn't feel he did all that much, really, but he's bruised and sore and he ends up getting shawarma with all of them anyway.

Later, much later, when it's just he and Natasha—the Black Widow—walking back to his apartment, she touches him with her shoulder and says, "You know, we could use you in D.C."

Steve thinks for a minute, about being an agent, like Natasha, who's one of the only people this century that he thinks could really be a friend; and then he thinks about the books he read at that cabin by the lake, about the history of US interventionism. He thinks about what SHIELD might want him for, about what it had felt like to be a figurehead.

"Nah," he says, "I think I'll pass."

She shakes her head, either mock-disappointed or real-disappointed, he can't tell. "That's a shame."

"I don't know, Nat," he says, and her eyes narrow. "We don't have to fall out of touch."

"Oh?" Her shoulders are tense, and he doesn't know what she's thinking, only what he means.

"Yeah." He shrugs one shoulder. "I feel like if we keep hanging out, I'm going to start thinking of you as a friend."

Then she laughs, like he hoped she would. "Okay, Steve," she says. "Just keep me up-to-date with what you decide to do instead, okay?"

"I will," he says, and means it.

*

The thing is, Steve doesn't have back pay from the army of which he was never an official member. However, his likeness has been used on countless merchandise over the years: comic books, movies, toys, clothing... The list goes on and on. Steve didn't really care until Tony sat him down and said, "What are you going to do now, Cap?" Steve didn't expect to keep seeing Tony after the whole aliens thing, but somehow Tony kept inviting him over and Steve kept saying yes, and now they're the kind of friends where Steve sometimes randomly asks Tony to lunch and Tony nearly always drops everything to come meet him, or Steve just shows up at the tower and unless Tony is actually meeting with his shareholders, Steve is invited up to wherever Tony is.

So they're in the middle of Tony's lab, and Steve looks him in the eye and says, "Well, I'm not going to be Cap, that's for one thing."

Tony, hands deep in the hollow holographic projection of whatever he's working on at the moment—some kind of robot, it looks like—says, "Okay, what are you going to do for money?"

Steve shrugs, but not casually. He'd been poor most of his life, and he isn't looking forward to being poor again. "Not sure. Get a job, I guess."

"You know," Tony says, "Pepper had an idea about that."

And so, after the threat of a suit for the back revenue on sixty-eight years of Steve’s likeness has been settled for an astronomical sum, Steve finds himself a man of leisure. He doesn't know what to do with leisure; he’s never had it. But he supposes he's going to learn.

The first thing he does is buy a motorcycle. You don't have to be built like a brick shithouse to tour the country. He goes west at first, to wide open spaces and sere landscapes, to a sky so big he doesn't know what to do with it. He goes to Los Angeles—but the vast urban sprawl of it doesn't feel like someplace he wants to stay for more than a visit. He goes north through pine mountains, and snowy landscapes, and it's beautiful but cold, and he's had enough of cold.

He goes back to New York to visit Tony and Bruce and Natasha and Clint, and it feels—not like coming home, but like a familiar place he's happy to visit. He goes to D.C. to see Peggy, and finds that his anger about what she and Howard had done with his name once he was gone has completely evaporated. Then he keeps going south, along the coast, and stops in a little town outside of Wilmington, NC, for a while.

He doesn't mean to stay, but it's an artsy town, a beach town, where he can take his sketchbook along the shore and draw for hours even if it’s still not quite right, and walk on bare feet in the sand, and maybe it isn't a place that will be home forever, but it's a place he can stop and rest. It feels like that’s something he hasn't done since waking up. On reflection, he hasn't.

It's a little bit lonely, he guesses, but there are people that he waves to, his neighbors, and people who run the local stores, and it's enough. Or at least, it's enough for a while.

Natasha comes to visit him, after he asks her. They walk along the beach, eat at a restaurant with a wooden floor always covered in sand, and he shows her his little beach house, with the spare room that she can stay in.

"Are you happy here?" Natasha asks after they stuff themselves full of seafood and walk back to Steve's house. They sit on the porch, beers in hand, looking out over the waves, streaked silver by moonlight. The sound of the waves is a comfort to Steve; the inexorable pull of the tide, eternal, unchanging, not bothered by petty human concerns such as his. The ocean is as it’s always been, ceaseless; happy or unhappy means nothing to it.

"Yeah," Steve says. He's a little fuzzy with alcohol. He can't actually get drunk anymore, and he hasn't had a hangover since 1938, but his edges are all a little blurry. Natasha's been drinking vodka since they got back, and he doesn't know where she's putting it. "I'm—I'm as happy as I have been, Nat."

She's seen his house, seen the drawings he's been working on, seen the books he's been reading, the plants in a row long his porch. She's also seen how he doesn't really interact with his neighbors, how easy it is  _ not  _ to interact in the rental houses along the beach. 

People are in and out by the week, mostly, with only a few other long-term rentals like himself. It's easy not to get to know anyone outside of surface-level interactions. It's easy to be alone, his calls to Nat and Tony every few weeks the deepest interactions he makes, and he can use the excuse that he's still trying to figure out modern technology or whatever, but the fact of the matter is that he picked all of that up pretty easily; eidetic memory and all. But all the technology in the world doesn't mean that he's not drifting anyway, a man out of one time, and not yet moored in the next.

He doesn't say any of that. He doesn't have to. She's one of the most perceptive people he’s ever known, and when he says he's happy, she takes that for exactly as much as it's worth.

"I worry about you, all alone out here," she says.

"There are plenty of people around, " he tells her.

"Steve." Her voice is no-nonsense. "Name me one friend you've made here, and I'll stop asking. Tell me you've been on a date, or had a Tinder hookup. Anything that's an actual connection to another human."

"I'm not ready for that." He picks at the label on the bottle of his beer. "I can't think about—dating someone." It's true. He hasn't felt the spark of attraction for anyone since he woke up, doesn't want to share this old/new body with anyone else just yet. If he's honest with himself, he doesn't want to let anyone else in. It's too soon after he lost everything else.

"What about friends?" Natasha looks at him.

"Well," Steve says, trying to sound light, not sure if he hits it, because what he's about to say is all too true. "That's where you come in." 

She stays a week. They go swimming, Steve draws her, they spar every day, and Natasha is pleased to see that he's lost none of the skills that she's taught him.

"It's not like I don't practice," he tells her, because he does. He actually loves it, this body that's so like the one he grew up with but takes forever to get out of breath. He goes running most mornings along the beach, punches the heavy bag he has set up under the porch, works on the moves she showed him as best as he can without a partner.

"I'd feel better if you had someone to practice with," she says, and tries to put him in a chokehold.

"Guess that just means you'll have to come visit again." He grabs her arm and flips her over his shoulder, using what she showed him to get leverage. She eels away from his grip, but her grin is sharp and pleased. "I don't anticipate getting attacked on the beach."

"Constant vigilance, Steve," she says.

"Hey." He tosses her a towel, grabs one for himself. "I got that reference."

Natasha has to go back, of course, and Steve feels lonelier after she leaves, at least for a little while. He knows he can't stay here forever, but he doesn't know what to do with the rest of his life, and this coastal town feels like he could drift along forever, as unending and unchanging as the crash of the waves against the shore.

Of course, he can't, though. Nothing lasts forever.

Natasha shows up at his house again not even three weeks after she left it.

Steve is trying to paint when his doorbell rings. It's not going well, and he's relieved to set down his brushes and paints. He wipes his brush clean then goes to answer the door.

"Nat." He knows he sounds more surprised than welcoming, but he tries to make up for it by opening the door and waving her in. "I didn't expect to see you again so soon, not that I'm complaining."

"I wish this was a social call," she says, and the hairs on the back of Steve's neck stand up.

She pulls a newspaper out of her purse, unfolds it, and shows him the headline: CAPTAIN AMERICA—ALIVE?

Steve looks at her and licks his suddenly-dry lips. "What is this?"

SHIELD had decided—and Steve had agreed—that there was no practical reason to reveal to the general public that he had survived the crash. When he had fought in New York, he had worn tactical gear, not any variation on the Captain America costume. What was the point? He wasn't Captain America anymore.

"There's a leak somewhere," Natasha says grimly. "It gets worse."

She pulls out another newspaper, not one of the reputable ones. This newspaper is more commonly seen in grocery store racks with headlines about bat boy and Elvis's alien love child. But there it is: a grainy picture of Steve in the Battle of New York under the headline NEW AVENGER? It's blurred—he'd been moving—but the square line of his jaw and the flop of his blond hair across his forehead are unmistakable. The article doesn’t actually connect him with Captain America, but he feels exposed anyway.

"Fuck," Steve says, with feeling.

"I have to agree," Natasha says.

"How bad is this?" Steve says. "Do I need to leave?"

"You could," Natasha says carefully. "You could go back to Manhattan and stay at the tower with Tony."

Steve makes a face. Natasha smiles at him like she agrees. Then her face goes serious again.

"I think you should be fine here," she says. "People are going to be looking for Captain America in New York, not North Carolina."

Steve rubs his jaw. "I could try to grow a beard, if you think that would help."

"It couldn't hurt," Natasha says. She eyes his hair, then reaches over to ruffle it. Steve would hate that from most people, but from her it feels affectionate. "Maybe grow your hair a little longer too."

He reaches up and gives his hair a self-conscious tug. It's longer now than it was in the Battle of New York anyway, not because of any intent on his part, but because of basic laziness.

"Okay," he says. "I'll give that a try."

Natasha hands him a phone. It's not nearly as fancy as the Stark phone that Tony provided him. In fact, it's a flip phone, which Steve has never seen before.

"This is a secured line," Natasha tells him. "Not that I think yours is insecure, but you never know. If you press one, it's a speed dial to me."

Steve looks at the phone, turns it over in his hands. "Why do you think I need this?"

"I don't know," she says, "but something's off. Somebody inside SHIELD leaked the story, and I don't know who or why they would do it. Until I find out, I'd rather just be prepared."

"Prepared for what?" He frowns.

"Anything," she says, and folds his fingers around the phone.

*


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A mysterious man in black appears.

Natasha leaves, and Steve falls back into his normal pattern of behavior. He has to admit that for the first few days, he's tense, jumping at every sound, staring at every flickering shadow around him. He doesn't know why; even if people know who he is now, or at least that the possibility of him exists in the world, what would anyone want with him?

He's not a supersoldier—hell, he's not any kind of a soldier, and he never really was—and while the Battle of New York may have proved that he does have some tactical skills that could be cultivated, the most he's been doing to strengthen them since he left New York is playing computer chess and reading histories of warfare. So really, he's not sure what he expects.

All he knows is that when it happens, it's nothing he could have predicted.

Six days after Natasha returns to New York or wherever it is super spies go when they're not visiting friends at the beach, Steve is out for his morning run when he feels eyes on him. He couldn't say how he knows someone's watching, but the hair on his arms stands straight up and he stumbles in the sand and pretends that he's checking his ankle for injury while he surreptitiously scopes out the area around him.

There's no one close by him, and in the distance, he immediately discounts as a threat a few beachcombers out looking for shells in the early morning light. He stands up and stretches, rolling his shoulders to limber them up as he turns from side to side.

He can't say what it is he actually spots—the glint of light off metal, maybe, or some anomaly in the man's silhouette. But when he finally looks up to the stand of trees by the parking lot, he catches a glimpse of a shadowy figure, a man, he thinks, just leaning against a car. There's nothing to say that this person has any interest in Steve at all, but Steve feels it like a fist pressed against his kidney: this person is here for him.

He turns around and starts running back towards home. His pace is a little faster than usual, but he can't bring himself to care. He looks back over his shoulder, and he never sees anyone following him, but he feels those eyes on his shoulder blades.

He reaches his house, takes deep, gasping breaths as he fumbles with the key. His heart is racing, and his breathing is the closest thing he's felt to an asthma attack since 1943. He kicks off his sandy shoes, not bothering to rinse his feet the way he usually does, and gets through the door, then locks it behind him. He has his fingers on Natasha's phone, and then he stops and makes himself think.

What did he really see? A man leaning against a car, watching him. There was no measurable threat. He doesn't actually know if the man was watching him, or just looking out over the beach in the morning sun. It didn't have to have anything to do with him at all, when he gets down to it. He trusts his instincts, but he knows he's been on edge since he saw those newspaper articles and realized that the protective shell of the life he's built around himself here might be broken.

He puts the phone down.

After he showers and changes, he spends a long moment frozen in rare indecision and decides that if he stays inside his house all day wondering about the mysterious man (or not so mysterious, his brain whispers, just another guy at the beach taking in the morning sun) he might actually lose his shit, so he grabs his key and heads for the diner he likes to frequent.

It's starting to edge toward fall, but the days are still warm enough that Steve thinks he might go wading on the beach later on, if he's not feeling so anxious.

"Hey, Steve," the waitress, Marina, says when he walks through the door. "Coffee?"

"Thanks." Steve grabs a newspaper off the counter and goes to his usual corner booth to sit. He scans the front page, then flips through the pages. Nothing new about him; that's a relief. Although he really won't know if there's anything new until he checks Google; the state of print journalism means that articles show up online before they hit the  _ Star-News _ .

Marina brings Steve his coffee and he orders eggs and bacon with grits and a biscuit. It's later than the early-breakfast crowd, but too early for the lunch rush, and there are just a few other people in the diner. An older couple are the only other people with a newspaper; she's reading the sports page and he's doing a crossword puzzle. A woman in a suit is eating a BLT with one hand and scribbling something into a tablet with a stylus in the other. There's a man in a black jacket and jeans sitting at the counter, hunched over his phone, his long hair falling in a curtain around his face.

Steve googles himself, sorts by latest article. Nothing new seems to have come up in the last day or so besides a few opinion pieces either decrying or welcoming the idea of Cap back from the dead, with a healthy serving of fake news. Steve breathes through his nose and tosses his phone down on the table in disgust. The guy at the counter looks up at the noise, and for a second, their eyes meet.

The guy's eyes are a slate gray, or maybe a very light blue. Something about his stare is intense, and Steve feels a breathtaking moment of connection that touches him in a way he's not sure he can explain. It only lasts an instant, but it feels so much longer.

The guy is good-looking, he thinks absently, but that's not what has his attention. It's something watchful and intense in his gaze; something Steve feels like an unexpected touch against bare skin. The guy's eyes widen, and he turns back to his coffee hastily, as though he'd been caught staring, as though Steve hadn't been staring back just as intently.

It leaves Steve feeling shaken, and though he keeps sneaking little glances at the guy while he eats his breakfast, he doesn't catch him looking back again. That doesn't mean he won't remember it, won't think about that moment again and again,

It's weird, is the thing. He has time to think about it after he pays his bill, determinedly not looking at the man still sitting at the counter. He has time to think about it while he walks back to his rented home. He knows what he looks like, knows how people used to look at him with the serum, how that startling wall of muscle and square-jawed face drew people's eyes.

But he also remembers drawing eyes in a different way, before the war, walking through DUMBO and seeing men's eyes follow him. He's a little bigger now than he was then, has packed on a little more muscle since these days he eats regularly and can run a mile without gasping for breath. But he's still wiry, smaller, his jaw more angular on a smaller face, his cheekbones still high and his eyelashes still long. He might not draw every eye any longer, but that doesn't mean he never draws any eyes at all.

For the first time since waking up in that white hospital room, he considers that he might want to catch someone's eye.

It leaves him nearly as unsettled as the mysterious watcher on the beach had.

*

He sleeps restlessly and not well. He had visited the art museum, gone walking on the beach, tried and failed to paint. He's been teaching himself to cook, and he made what was supposed to be a foolproof dish, but he was distracted and flighty, and managed to burn it. His metabolism is higher than the average person's, although not what it once was, so he forced himself to eat around the burnt bits, but it wasn't very satisfying. He reads the same page in his book three times at least before giving up and trying to go to bed early.

That doesn't go well either, and he wakes up nearly every hour, never sleeping long enough for it to feel in any way satisfying. When he wakes up again at a quarter to four in the morning, he's so irritated that he gives up and walks to the kitchen for a glass of water.

He flips on the light and freezes. Sitting at his little two-person table is a man in black combat gear. He's armed to the teeth and wears a mask that looks uncomfortably like a muzzle. Steve counts at least six knives, three guns, and what might be some kind of grenade. Above the muzzle are a pair of goggles; possibly night vision, but maybe not. Long brown hair frames the man's face but with the mask and the goggles, he looks alien, inhuman.

Steve's mouth, already dry, feels like a desert. "What do you want?" he manages to say.

The man doesn't say anything. Steve is gripped by a sense of unreality, the thought that this might be a dream, or a nightmare. He's also gripped by the terrible certainty that it is not, and he regrets, more than anything, that he did not call Natasha.

"Who are you?" he tries again.

The man cocks his head, and says, in accented English, "The Fist."

"What the fuck kind of name is that supposed to be?" Steve says, mostly to himself.

But the man answers anyway. "The one they gave me."

"Who's they?" Steve says.

"Hydra." The man's gloved hands clench, oh so slightly, into fists.

"What the  _ fuck," _ Steve says again, because everyone knows Hydra were Nazis, and everyone knows that the Allies won World War II. Steve is not naive enough to think that Nazi ideology hasn't flourished under new guises, but this specific branch of it was supposed to be dead and gone.

"Why did they send you here?" he asks sharply, and then, "I'm not calling you the Fist, that's stupid. That's not a name for a person."

Steve can't see the man's face, and he doesn't really move except to tilt his head again, but Steve gets the feeling that he has somehow surprised him. "Well?" he says. "Why are you here?"

"They sent me to kill you," the man says, and stands up.

Steve is grasped by the sudden, certain knowledge that this is the end of the line for him.

This man is some kind of assassin, and for some reason, perhaps because the last time he died he took the Red Skull with him, Hydra wants him killed before he can kill any more of them. A bitter laugh sticks in his throat. He had wanted to be a soldier, and never really been allowed to be one until the end, and now that he no longer wants to be one, he's going to die for the misconception that he was one.

"Then why am I alive?" Steve looks at the man. He wishes he could see his face while he tries to reason with him, to ask for his life. "That was you on the beach, wasn't it? You could have killed me then. You could have killed me just now, before I even got the lights on. So why?"

Steve feels, for the second time, that he has surprised his would-be murderer. "You're not—" Even through the distortion of the mask, the man's voice sounds hesitant. "You're not what they said you were."

Steve stares blankly at him for a moment, and then he has to laugh. "Did they tell you I was a soldier?"

"I saw photographs," the man says. "I saw film footage. I thought you were...taller."

Steve laughs again; he can't help it.  _ Taller  _ seems to gloss over everything else that his supersoldier body was.

"Yeah?" he says. "I thought I was dead." And then he's really laughing, and he can't stop, can't seem to get his breathing under control. He thinks,  _ oh shit. _ He thinks,  _ here's that breakdown I was due. _ Because he is due, isn't he? He survived what could should have killed him, changed his shape yet again, found himself in this impossible future where he fought aliens, for God's sake, and his best friend is a spy. And now, he's sitting here with this man who calls himself a Fist, who's come to kill him, and he can't stop laughing. It's all so stupid. and he might be a little bit in shock, or hysterical, or something, but the fact of the matter is, he doesn't want to die.

He laughs so hard that his knees start to go beneath him, unwilling or unable to support his weight. He could just sprawl out on the floor and laugh until he breaks apart, but a black shape moves in the corner of his vision and he thinks,  _ Well, here it is. I'm not ready to die, but it's happening. _

It's with a sensation of shock that he feels, not a bullet or a knife, but a very firm arm coming beneath his armpit to hold him up. He laughs helplessly, held up by his assassin, until the laughter turns to gasping sobs, and the other black-clad arm comes up around his shoulders, and he cries into the dubious comfort of a Kevlar chest plate. Finally, the sudden storm of emotion loosens its grip on him, and he's able to catch his breath.

"I'm sorry." He wipes his eyes. He's aware as soon as he says it that it is ridiculous to apologize for crying to the man who's come to kill him, but it's done now. "Do what you're going to do, I guess. I can't stop you."

Although, if it comes down to it, he's going to try every dirty trick that Natasha ever taught him. it's just that he doesn't think it's going to do any good to go up against a man wearing body armor whose weapons have weapons and who is built like a brick shithouse besides, when he is unarmed in his pajamas and built more like a rickety outhouse.

The man looks at him, he thinks, although it's hard to tell with the goggles and the mask. "I'm not going to kill you yet."

"Well, that's awfully..." Steve trails off. Nice of him? Kind? It's neither of those things. Steve doesn't know what it is.

"I am in possession of insufficient information," the man says. "I need more data before the mission can proceed."

"What does that mean?" Steve asks.

"Close observation," the man replies and sits back down at Steve's kitchen table.

"Let me be sure I understand this," Steve says. "You're going to stick around and watch me until you decide whether or not to carry out your mission? Your mission, to be clear, of killing me?"

"Yes," the man says.

Steve bites his lip, then goes to the kitchen cabinet to get a glass. He's even thirstier than he was before his laughing/crying jag, and drained and trembling in the aftermath of strong emotion. This is completely ridiculous, but maybe if Steve watches and waits, he'll get a chance to call Natasha. Natasha might know what the fuck is going on with this guy. In the meantime, all he can do is try not to look threatening. At least that part shouldn't be difficult. He needs to humanize himself to the other guy, find out what the dichotomy is between what he expected and what Steve actually is. He's got to start somewhere.

"Can I get you a glass of water?" Steve asks.

The guy waits a long second, seems to give the question a lot more thought than it deserves. "Yes," he finally says.

Steve gets the glasses down from the cabinet, pulls ice out of the freezer, and crosses to the kitchen sink to fill them. He can hear movement behind him, but he doesn't look. If the guy wants to kill him, he's going to kill him, and he doesn't think the guy lied when he said he wasn't going to do it, at least not yet.

When he turns back around, glasses in his hands, the guy has taken his muzzle off. Steve stares, mesmerized, at a surprisingly full pair of lips, a layer of dark stubble on a very square jaw, a straight nose, and a dimpled chin. It's... It's a lot to take in, really. Steve doesn't know how having only this much of his face exposed can make the man look vulnerable and dangerous at the same time, but Steve can't take his eyes off of him.

He crosses the space between them, and give him a glass of water. The man takes it with his gloved left hand, and reaches up to his face with his right. He pulls his goggles up and Steve is struck with how vastly unfair the universe is, because he’s seen the pair of gray-blue eyes looking at him.

“You were at the coffee shop," Steve says.

"Gathering intelligence." The man takes a sip of water. Steve has to set his own glass down and rub at his eyes with the heels of his palms, because of fucking course this is his life.

"Are you going to have another emotional outburst?" the man asks with clinical curiosity.

Steve drops his hands and glares at him. "No," he says. "I'm going to drink my water."

And he does. The man drinks his water too, and Steve watches the movement of his throat where it disappears into his combat gear.

"What can I call you?" Steve says. "Don't say the Fist, I'm not calling you that."

The man sets the drink on the table, next to Steve's, his motions efficient and precise. There is a lingering drop of water smeared across his bottom lip, and Steve hates that he notices it. "Sometimes they call me soldier," the man offers, and it's still not a name, but Steve thinks he can at least call him that without snickering.

"All right, soldier," Steve says. "What next?"

The soldier glances at the oven clock. It's just after four-thirty. Steve feels like this exchange ought to have taken hours, but it hasn't.

"You should go back to sleep until it's time for your run," the soldier says. This is on the one hand a terribly mundane statement, and on the other a distressing example of how well the soldier know Steve's routine.

"I don't think I'll be able to get back to sleep," Steve says.

"I will keep watch," the soldier says. "Nothing will get past me."

This is not as comforting as the soldier seems to think it is. It's only by an epic feat of willpower that Steve doesn't tell him so. Besides, if Steve goes back to his room, he can think about how to get out of this mess.

"Okay," he says. "I'm going to go back upstairs and lie down." But as he leaves the kitchen, the soldier comes with him. "What are you doing?" Steve says, coming to a stop at the foot of the stairs.

"I'm coming with you," the soldier says, as if this ought to be self-evident.

"While I  _ sleep," _ Steve says flatly.

"You're my mission." The soldier looks at him, goggles still pushed up on his forehead, mask dangling from one hand. "I can't allow the mission to be compromised."

Steve suspects that this translates in normal person speech to "I'm going to make sure you don't run away or call anyone," which, to be fair, was exactly what Steve had been planning on doing.

Steve walks up the stairs to the bedroom, and for a moment entertains the hope that the soldier will guard him from the hall, but that hope is dashed as the soldier follows him in. The thought of lying down on the bed while the heavily-armed soldier keeps some kind of bizarre watch over him is...not great, but it's what Steve has to work with.

He clambers back into his bed, certain he won't be able to sleep, scenarios of how he might get away playing through his head. Steve lays in bed, staring at the ceiling, hyperaware of the soldier, sitting up against the closet door, watching him.

"You don't have to stare," he says. "I don't think I'll be able to sleep if you are." This is a semi-truth at best; he's not going to be able to sleep regardless. He only came up here because he didn't know what else to do and thought the soldier might give him some time alone. Failing that, all he can do is lay there, every limb tense with the feelings of eyes on him, trying to think through his options.

Fighting his way past his captor is out of the question. The soldier is much bigger than him, and despite the training Natasha's been giving him, he's not a killer. He's been in a lot of fights, but—ironically or not, he can't tell—since enlisting in the army, the vast majority of the violence he's committed has been on the stage. This guy is clearly steeped in death. Steve has no idea how he's going to get out of this. He doesn't know what to do to keep the soldier from killing him; if he knew, he'd keep doing that.

He lies there for perhaps an hour and a half. His mind is far too busy and he has far too much adrenaline running through his system—and too much assassin staring at him—to possibly sleep, and when he can't stand lying there much longer either, a little after six, he sits up in the bed, catches the glint of the soldier's pale eyes tracking his movement in the gray pre-dawn light.

"I'm going running," Steve says.

"You didn't sleep." The soldier stretches and rolls his shoulders.

"Yeah, funny thing." Steve swings his legs out over the side of the bed and sets a foot on the smooth wood of the floor. "It's hard to sleep when there's a guy with a bunch of guns watching you."

"I'll accompany you on your run." The soldier pushes himself to his feet.

"Not like that you won't," Steve says. The soldier lifts a single skeptical eyebrow, and somehow it's the most human expression Steve has yet seen on him. "I'm not going running on the beach with you with you looking like an arsenal. You can watch me from a distance or disarm, you're not freaking out my neighbors like that."

The soldier looks at him for a long moment. "I need to retrieve my civilian clothing."

"Okay," Steve says easily. "You can do that while I run."

"Unacceptable." The soldier rolls his shoulders again and Steve wonders just how stiff he got, sitting on the floor while Steve lay on the bed.

"Then I'll wait here while you go get your stuff," Steve lies easily.

The solider snorts. "Change into your running clothes. We'll go together."

Steve splays his toes against the hardwood as if that could stop the soldier from making him go wherever the soldier wanted. "I don't want that. I don't want you to—to take me to a secondary location."

The soldier nods briefly. "That's good strategy. But—" His eyes, more gray than blue in the dim light, flick to Steve. "I can't leave you alone either."

_ It's not fair, _ Steve wants to say, or  _ you can't do this, _ but while the first is certainly true, it doesn't count for much, and the second is just a wish.

"I shouldn't have needed it," the soldier says abruptly. "I should have been done." He turns his head to look directly at Steve, and the line of jaw is as sharp as a knife, and even in the dim light, his eyes are uncertain. "But you are not what they said, do you understand? This is..." He blows out a breath. "This is outside my experience. Whatever happens now is suboptimal."

"Yeah, for both of us, pal," Steve says, and then it sinks in that the soldier is trying to tell him something. Steve thinks furiously, trying to take in the cues about the soldier besides his imminent danger to Steve's person.

But he hasn't actually hurt him, so far. Even his threats have been...delayed, Steve supposes.

Steve's not sure exactly what he sees in the soldier. Someone trying to make sense of confusing orders, maybe. But he thinks there's something more; because the soldier doesn't seem to have much in the way of basic interaction. And part of that, surely, is that he's an assassin, a killing machine. As indirectly as Steve had been involved in fighting, he had at least known soldiers during the war, and even the most hardened of them weren't like the soldier. The army didn't make him a soldier, but he did meet some and they weren’t...like this.

"All right," Steve says. "Let me change clothes. We'll go get your stuff."

Of course, there’s a certain level of dancing around involved when the soldier doesn’t want to even let Steve go to the bathroom by himself, but Steve just conceded to go to the soldier’s cache of civilian clothes or whatever, and he’s in no mood to give in again. The soldier pointedly takes his phone before he goes in the bathroom to change, but it’s only his regular phone. The one Natasha gave him is still safe in its place in his desk. If he ever gets a chance to get to it, he'll find a way to contact her. He already got one concession—going to the bathroom by himself. He’ll find a way.

It's only when they're in the soldier's car—a boring beige sedan—that Steve spares a thought in a more specific sense for the  _ they  _ that sent the soldier after him.

"Your handlers," he says urgently. "Will your handlers be wherever we're going?"

The soldiers stiffens infinitesimally, and then relaxes.

"No handlers," he says shortly. And then, after a quick glance at Steve and then returning his gaze to the road, he added, "I don't check in for a week."

"Why so much time?" Steve asks.

"They didn't expect your routine to be so boring," the soldier says.

Steve turns to glare at him, only to find that the soldier’s eyebrows are slightly raised, as though he's surprised at himself, and the corner of his mouth has ticked up in a very uncertain smile.

Steve can't quite make himself smile back, but he nods. The soldier drives him to a warehouse maybe ten minutes outside of town and cuffs him in the car over Steve's loud protests while he runs in. He's back in under three minutes with a large duffel bag over his shoulder, before Steve has time to do more than rub his wrists a little raw on the cuffs. The soldier throws the bag into the backseat, then slides into the driver's seat and unlocks Steve's wrists, frowning over the irritated skin. Steve lifts his eyebrows, and the soldier just shakes his head.

The drive back to the house, the soldier obeying the speed limits. He parks in the driveway next to Steve’s Civic and pulls the bag out of the back, throwing it over his shoulder.

"Okay, go get changed," Steve says, hoping but not expecting that the soldier will leave him alone.

"Come with me," the soldier says, and Steve follows him up the stairs, resigned to his fate. 

The soldier takes his duffel bag up to Steve's room, and with no sign of modesty or compunction about changing in front of Steve, he strips off his armor, starting with his gloves. Steve bites his lip to keep from yelling, because one of the soldier’s arms is  _ metal, _ made of plates that Steve can see even through the compression shirt underneath the armor. He’s never seen anything like it—it doesn’t look like Tony’s kind of engineering, but Steve couldn’t say whose engineering it is—and he wonders, throat dry, what led this man to have it put in. It looks menacing, like a weapon, and it whirs faintly as it moves. The hem of his shirt lifts with the soldier's movements as he starts to pull it off to reveal a narrow strip of pale skin. 

Steve has to take a moment to lament once again how ridiculous it is that the first person this century he's felt any sort of spark of attraction to is unfortunately also the person who was told to kill him. But he doesn't have long to dwell on this regret, because as the compression shirt clears the soldier's shoulders and head, the place where the metal arm joins his body becomes visible, and Steve has to swallow hard.

There's terrible scarring all around the metal shoulder. Even in the future, Steve's never heard of a prosthetic that is permanently attached to the body, and yet, here it is before him. The arm itself is a mechanical marvel, all interlocking plates emblazoned with a red star at the shoulder, but all Steve can think, looking at it, is it how much it must have hurt.

"What happened?" Steve says softly.

The soldier turns to look at him, expression guarded, eyes blank and flat as a shark's. "I don't know," he says. "I don't remember."

"I'm sorry," Steve says.

The soldier’s hands stop moving, still twisted in his compression shirt. "What for?"

"For whatever happened to you," Steve says.

The soldier's expression opens up, just enough for Steve to read the confusion on it.

"You didn't do it," he says. "I know that much."

Steve doesn't know how to explain that he's not sorry because he feels guilty, only sorry that the other man suffered. "I know," he says. "But I'm sorry that you hurt that much."

The soldier shrugs but Steve doesn't think that he's dismissing it so much as perhaps that he doesn't understand Steve's sympathy. Steve doesn't completely understand it himself; this man was sent to kill him.

The soldier pulls a long-sleeved t-shirt out of his bag and pulls it over his head. Then he puts his gloves back on.

"You're going to boil running in that," Steve says.

The soldier just shrugs. Steve decides that if the man passes out from heat stroke mid-run, that will at least solve some of his problems.

It doesn't happen.

The soldier runs like a machine, relentless and efficient. It's possible that Steve has a bit of a competitive streak, and he tries to set a fairly quick pace, but every time he pushes a little faster, the soldier keeps up with him. It makes sense; Steve runs and works out and spars with Natasha, but he's not combat-ready. The soldier very clearly is. Steve eventually gives up trying to push and they turn around and jog back home at a more sedate pace.

*

Negotiating the showers is an interesting experience. Steve manages to argue for a shower by himself, with the soldier waiting outside the door. It's not the worst shower of his life, he guesses, but tense and waiting for the soldier to snap and kill him while he's naked makes it one of the fastest showers of his life.

And then a new set of complications arises, once Steve is clean and changed, and he tells the soldier, "Your turn, I guess."

The soldier looks at him, long hair tangled and sweaty, because even unstoppable assassins sweat, and says, "What?"

"The shower," Steve says. "It's your turn."

The soldier stares at him.

"I didn't use all the hot water," Steve says. "There's plenty enough for you too."

"Hot water," the soldier says blankly.

Steve isn't sure why this idea seems to have thrown the soldier for a loop, but if the soldier takes a shower, even for five minutes, Steve can get in touch with Natasha. "Yeah, hot water, and lots of it. The house is a rental, it's got a huge water heater."

In the end, Steve convinces the soldier to take a shower, but it's not the opportunity he was hoping for. The soldier gets a change of clothes, and locks them both in the bathroom. Steve sits on the toilet with a sigh.

The soldier gets the water going, and strips down in front of Steve. Steve tries to politely avert his eyes, but he can't help but notice the soldier’s everything. He seems to have very little in the way of personal modesty, or maybe someone with such a visible history of pain just doesn't care. Because it's not just the scars where the arm attaches; his smooth, pale skin is interrupted by a myriad of old wounds, each one a memorial to violence. It makes Steve hurt to look at them anyway.

The soldier is all lithe muscle once he's stripped out of his running clothes. He steps in the shower, and makes a muffled exclamation.

"Are you all right?" Steve asks.

"I didn't—" The soldier sounds confused. "It's hot."

"The water?" Steve feels just as confused. "You can adjust it if it's too hot."

"It's not that. I don't—I don't—" He's quiet for a long minute in which all Steve can hear is the splashing sounds of him moving under the water. "I've done this before," Steve hears him say very quietly.

"Taken a shower?" Steve adjusts his seat on the toilet lid, splays his bare toes against the cool tile floor.

"It's usually cold." The soldier says. "When they—"

"When they what?" Steve says. His heart is in his throat, and he doesn't know why. This whole exchange is weird and off. He can only see the edges of the story that the soldier is implying, but he doesn't like it.

"Between missions," the soldier says slowly, "they..." The shower curtain pulls back and the soldier looks out at Steve. His face is framed with steam from the water, and his long, dark hair falls in thick wet strands around his face. "The water was always cold," he says. His pale eyes are questioning, confused.

"What about before? Before you started doing this work." Steve thinks about what he said, that he doesn't remember what happened to his arm.

When the soldier replies, "I don't remember," it's just another piece in the puzzle that the soldier represents. But the soldier is now visibly upset, as though he just realized that not being able to remember these things isn't how memory should work. He stands in hot water, hot enough to send clouds of steam billowing out through the open shower curtain, and shivers.

Maybe Steve shouldn't feel bad for him—he came here to kill Steve, and Steve doubts he's the first person that he's been ordered to kill. But Steve's never been one to let an injustice stand when he could help it, and he can recognize an injustice when it's staring at him naked with big, gray eyes.

"Well, you can get cleaned up now," Steve says gently, "and then maybe we can work on getting something to eat."

The soldier finishes his shower with the curtain partially cracked, watching Steve through the gap. Steve doesn't quite know how to categorize it; he doesn't think the soldier is watching for signs of escape, but more reassuring himself about—something, Steve's not sure what. The soldier towels himself off briskly, then gets dressed. Steve sits on the toilet and watches, trying not to stare.

Afterwards they go downstairs to the kitchen. It's midway between breakfast and lunch, and Steve opts to go ahead and make them an early lunch. He opens a can of tomato soup and pulls out the stuff to make sandwiches while the soldier sits at the table and watches him, a furrow scribing the smooth skin between his eyebrows. Steve lays out bread, ham, and cheese on a cutting board, and gets the skillet heating while he pulls butter from the fridge.

"When you said between missions, what exactly did you mean?" Steve says. "Do you, like, have a second job that you do when they aren't sending you to kill people?"

The line between the soldiers eyebrows gets deeper. "No," he says but it sounds a little hesitant. He frowns. "I don't know what—" His hands suddenly tighten into fists on the table in front of him, the knuckles going white in his right hand, metal making a whirring noise in his left. "I don't remember. I know there have been other missions, but I don't remember any of them. I don't know what happens to me between them." Distress is obvious in his voice, and Steve sets down the sliced bread and goes to the table, sits opposite him.

"Hey," he says. "You're here now. What would happen if you just didn't go back to them?"

The soldier goes very still. "I don't know," he says. "And then, punishment." He shudders.

"Punishment?" Steve looks at him. His lips press together in a thin, flat line.

"I don't remember," the soldier says. "I don't know what it was for, or what they did. I remember that it hurt."

Steve knows that what he's about to say is a stupid idea, but he could no more not say it then he could grow wings and fly. Everything about the soldier is hitting Steve in the intersection of his compassion, his sense of injustice, and his poor impulse control. So of course, he says it anyway.

"Let me help you."

The soldier's eyebrows shoot up as he looks from his hands, or whatever terrible half-memories he was trying to summon up while he stared at them, to Steve's face. "What?"

"Let me help you," Steve repeats. "You don't seem like you want to go back to your handlers. Why would you? I can help you get away from them."

The soldier's eyes narrow. "Why would you do that?"

"I don't like bullies," Steve says. "It sounds to me like you've been made to do a lot of things. Maybe things you wouldn't want to do if you have the choice."

"If I had the choice," the soldier echoes.

Steve knows he's still in danger, but his heart aches. It's not the same thing—it's not the same thing at all, not remotely—but Steve joined the army to try to help people, and then was turned into nothing more than a dancing monkey. Whoever this man is, however he got into this, Steve doubts he fully knew what he was signing up for. No one would consent to have memories of nothing but assassinations.

"If you had the choice," Steve says slowly, "what would you do now?"

The soldier leans back against the back of the chair, sits up straight. "I don't know."

"Maybe," Steve says, "you can take the extra time before your handlers expect you to check in and find out what it is you want to do."

The soldier nods slowly. He looks as though he has a million thoughts racing a million miles an hour in his head right now. Steve only wishes he knew what any of them were.

"Look," Steve says after a brief silence. "I can't keep calling you soldier in my head. Give me a name to call you. It doesn't have to be yours."

"That's another thing I don't remember," the soldier says, and it cuts at something inside Steve.

"Maybe you could pick one out," Steve says as calmly as he can manage. "Just something for me to call you, so I don't just keep thinking of you as the soldier or calling you pal, or buddy."

The soldier twitches a little at that, but Steve can't figure out why. "You pick," he says hoarsely. "It doesn't matter what you call me. Whatever is easiest. A name for a person."

"Okay," Steve says, although he feels very uncomfortable with this. The man should pick out his own fake name. "How about...Jack," Steve says, saying the very first name to spring to mind:  _ hit the road, Jack, don’t you come back no more. _ A song from his time in the ice, that he had learned only after his rebirth.

"Sure," the soldier says. "That's as good as any."

"All right, Jack," Steve says. "What if I finish making us lunch, and then we go into town for a little bit."

"Into town?" The soldier—Jack—lifts an eyebrow questioningly.

"Yeah," Steve says. "I've got some things I want to do, and you can continue—" He hesitates. "You can continue with close observation," he says more firmly, "and you can decide if you want me to ask my friends to help you."

"Okay," Jack says slowly. "Let's do that."

*

Jack goes quietly enough with Steve on his errands. They take the extremely nondescript blue Honda Civic that Natasha helped Steve procure. It's not traceable back to Steve Rogers if he gets pulled over, and that's his main concern.

Jack makes no comment about the hardware store, where Steve needs to get some caulk to seal the downstairs bathroom, or the art supply store, where Steve needs to pick up cobalt blue for the paintings he's failing to paint, or the running shoe store, because Steve's shoes are going flat and he doesn't want to hurt his feet. He takes in every stop with wide, wondering eyes, and Steve wonders if everyday little interactions are something else that he doesn't remember. The backseat of the Civic is stuffed with bags and boxes before they even get to the library.

But it's the library that seems to knock Jack for a loop. He looks around at all the books, stacks and stacks of them, and his mouth actually drops open.

"Is there something you want to read?" Steve asks. "I can help you find it."

"Yes?" Jack says. "I mean, is that allowed?"

"It's a library, pal," Steve says. "Borrowing books is kind of the point."

"I don't—" Jack swallows. "I don't know if I've done this before."

Steve has a brief, panicked moment where he wonders if Jack, in fact, knows how to read, but he picks up a hardback from the Staff Picks shelf and starts flipping through it, brow creased, so Steve assumes he's actually reading it.

"I'm going to drop off the books I already read," Steve says, and Jack follows, watches as Steve slides the books into the drop-off box.

"Steve," Jack says, and Steve can't help jumping a little, can't help whatever face he's making. It's the first time Jack has called him by his name. Jack looks a little wild-eyed as well, running the fingers of his flesh hand over the Staff Picks books. "How many books can we check out?"

"As many as you want," Steve says. "I've never hit the limit before."

They leave the library with a fat stack of books in the Civic's backseat, and a pensive mood in the front seat. 

When they get back to the house, Steve takes the caulk to the downstairs bathroom and sets about sealing the shower where it's been leaking. Jack comes with him, book in hand, and sits down on the toilet to read. He's so quiet that Steve almost—not quite, but almost—forgets that he has an audience.

"What is this?" Jack says, and Steve startles, accidentally squeezing out a blurt of caulk. He reaches out to scrape it away.

"Which one are you reading?" Steve smooths the scraped-away caulk flat.

Jack shows him the cover, a tasteful painting in gray and white and red of two space ships passing each other.

"Looks like science fiction," Steve says. He thinks he's seen the title on some best-of lists in the last couple of years.

"Is it real? Are there spaceships?" Jack is frowning at the cover of the book like it holds the answers to the mysteries of life.

"Well," Steve says slowly, "there are spaceships, but not  _ those  _ spaceships."

Jack glares at Steve for just a second, like he thinks Steve is fucking with him. "Spaceships, but not these spaceships," he says flatly.

Steve's about to ask him—doesn't he remember the Battle of New York? But he remembers that it's actually a possibility that he doesn't, so he changes what he was about to say. "Do you know about the Battle of New York?"

The soldier sits back on the toilet, brow furrowed. "I don't think so." He sounds faintly betrayed. "I'm sure I would have remembered spaceships."

Steve reseals the caulk. "Tell you what," he says, "let's go look up some spaceships for you."

Steve pulls up a Wikipedia article on the Battle of New York. He doesn't read it; he doesn't want to. He was there, and he doesn't need to hash out whatever emphasis people have put on his or the Avengers' actions. Jack reads it, his brow wrinkling, some emotion that Steve can't parse crossing across his face.

Then Jack does an image search on the Chitauri, and clicks from picture to picture. Steve finds he has to look away from these too; he's not prepared for the mix of emotions that churn through him at the sight, or the way his breathing and his pulse both speed. But he looks back when Jack speaks abruptly. "That's you."

He's not sure how Jack identified him so easily. The image is really just his back in the tactical gear, his head not turned quite enough to catch his profile, his arm bent as he spoke into his comm unit.

"Yeah," Steve says. "I was there."

"You fought them." Jack looks at him, searching for something in his face..

"I helped," Steve replies.

"What was your role?" There are so many questions in his gray-blue eyes, and Steve finds he has to answer, has to fill in some of the many gaps in his mind.

So he tells him. He tells him how he helps direct the Avengers' forces, how he was involved in some of the hand-to-hand fighting; he even finds himself telling Jack about how terrifying it had been, to be in a body without the advantages he had been used to. How his fear had fought with his knowledge of how best to array their forces, how he had known that they needed what abilities he had to give.

"So you did used to be different," Jack says softly. "You did used to be him, the captain."

"Yes," Steve says simply, and braces himself. If that's the piece of knowledge that Jack was waiting on to decide to continue his mission, there's nothing Steve can do about it. But Jack doesn't seem to be on the edge of imminent violence.

Instead he seems to be mulling it over. "What happened?"

"I was made in World War II," Steve says, "and I died in World War II. I fought someone—" He doesn't feel the need to tell him right this second that it was Hydra that he was fighting. "—and there was a plane full of bombs, too many to disarm. The only way to be rid of them was to crash the plane, so I did. Right into the ocean." Steve looks at his hands, the long fingers, the bony wrists. He had never thought he would see them again like this; he had never thought these hands would have the chance to do anything else, and he had been all right with that.

"What happened?" Jack asks again, quietly.

"I froze in the water," Steve tells him. "I froze, and I guess I slept. When I woke up again, it was this century. It was right before the Battle of New York, actually. When they made me, they gave me a serum that turned me into Captain America. The doctors think that it used up most of its power keeping me alive underneath the ice. So I woke up like this."

Jack looks back at the tablet in his hands, touches the edge of Steve's shoulder in the picture. "Why aren't they still making use of you? You helped win this."

"I guess they were like you." Steve manages a brittle laugh. Jack just looks at him. "They were expecting me to be bigger."

Jack frowns. "That's very short-sighted." He says it so judgmentally that Steve has to laugh again.

"Thanks, pal," he says.

*

Steve kind of wants to go to the diner for dinner, but also the thought of trying to navigate his and Jack's strange captor/captive relationship in public seems too exhausting. Steve has some chicken that he's been meaning to cook, and he guesses that's what he's doing tonight. Steve might not look like a supersoldier anymore, but his metabolism still runs fast so he tends to cook a lot, and his leftovers don't last very long.

He goes out to the little herb garden that he's started in pots by the front door and cuts thyme and sage. Jack comes with him, watching curiously, and follows him back into the kitchen. Steve gets a cutting board out, slices some lemons, scores the chicken skin, and slides the herbs under the skin. He pulls out the guts, neatly knotted in little paper bags—much easier than gutting the chicken himself—and puts two lemon halves inside the cavity. He salts and peppers the skin, and rubs in some olive oil while the oven is preheating. He starts halving little potatoes and Brussels sprouts. He jumps a little when Jack offers, "I could cut those for you."

It's not like Jack doesn’t have a knife—more than one, to be honest—on him at all times, Steve knows. He might have been wearing civilian clothes, but he was armed. So giving him a chef's knife is not taking Steve's life into his hands any more than anything else they've done all day.

"You take the potatoes," Steve says, and shows him about how big he wants them to be. They salt and pepper the vegetables once they're done chopping, and spread them in the bottom of a roasting pan. Steve puts the wire rack inside, and the chicken on top of it.

"The chicken fat will drip down and baste the vegetables," Steve tells Jack, who has been watching all of this as though it's some kind of witchcraft. "It'll be ready to eat in about an hour and a half."

They pass the time until dinner is ready in the living room with a documentary about penguins. Steve finds it entertaining, and Jack watches part of it, and reads his book the rest of the time. It starts to smell really good, and by the time the chicken is ready, Steve's stomach is grumbling.

"Do you like dark meat or white meat?" Steve asks.

"I don't know," Jack says apologetically.

Steve clears his throat. "Well then, how about you try some of each?"

Steve plates them up chicken and vegetables and a side salad as well, and Jack's face when he bites in is both hilarious and sad, because he looks as though he's having some kind of rapture, and it's just chicken and potatoes.

"I never really knew how to cook before," Steve tells him, "but I've been teaching myself. You can find out a lot about it online. You know, if you ever wanted to learn more about it too."

"I could," Jack says slowly, "couldn't I?"

Steve has to show Jack how to do the dishes as well, but he helps clean up once Steve shows him what to do. They watch TV for a little bit longer, but even if Jack has ended up much friendlier than Steve would have assumed any assassin to be, it's still been a long, tiring day, and Steve has been tensed up for most of it. Exhaustion hits him like a hammer.

"I'm going up to bed," Steve says. "There's a spare room, if you want."

Jack does not want that. Jack picks up his book and follows Steve up the stairs. Steve tries to point him toward the guest bed, but he gives Steve another flat look and follows him into his room. After some intense negotiation re: the bathroom ("I'm sorry, pal, I don't really want to watch you pee") they settle on Jack waiting outside the door while Steve does his nightly ablutions, and Jack ties him to the bathroom doorknob while he does his—but on the outside of the door. Steve guesses that it's the best he can hope for, really, considering that Jack's experience of bathroom time seems mostly limited to  _ being hosed down in cold water, _ and Steve really doesn't want to contemplate under what circumstances he's had to actually use the bathroom. He just tells him where the spare toothbrush is and lets it go.

After they're both cleaned up and changed into pajamas (Steve: t-shirt from a local business and sleep pants; Jack: black t-shirt, back joggers), Steve climbs into bed. Jack props himself against the closet door, keeping guard—over Steve or against Steve, he can't tell.

"You sure you don't want the spare room?" Steve asks. "It's got to be more comfortable than sleeping sitting up." 

Jack shoots him a dark look and settles back in against the door, which is answer enough, Steve guesses. The shadows under his eyes look pronounced in the dim light.

Steve sighs and turns over, putting his back to the soldier. It makes his skin crawl, leaving that obvious a threat where he can't see him, but fuck it. Steve's been up since the wee hours of the morning, and he's tired. And, he thinks, if Jack decides he's observed enough and it's time for Steve to die, his being awake or not isn't going to make that much of a difference.

"Good night, Jack," Steve says. He slides his hand under his pillow and tries to sleep. It's surprisingly easy to start to doze, his tense shoulders slowly relaxing, his head sinking into the pillow. He's so tired.

"Good night, Steve," he thinks he hears, right as he slips into sleep, and he's not sure whether he really heard it or it was part of his dreams.

*

Steve wakes up with a crick in his neck from holding his shoulders tense all night long. He doesn't have a moment of disorientation--he knows exactly where he is and who he's with, and why his shoulders have been tense all night.

He stayed facing away from the soldier--Jack--all night, and as he turns over, his back pops. He's not trying to be stealthy at all, because if Jack somehow is still asleep, he suspects trying to be sneaky might trigger a reaction that gets him seriously injured if not killed.

But it turns out he didn't need to worry about that, because Jack is awake and staring at him. Whether or not he was staring before Steve woke up, Steve decides not to think about because he doesn't want to, frankly. The whole situation is creepy and uncomfortable enough as it is. He doesn't really feel like he got that much sleep, but he's just going to have to make the best of it, and try to find an opportunity to have some time to himself so he can call Natasha. He sits up in the bed, pushing himself back against his pillows. Jack's eyes track his every movement, wary.

Steve knows that Jack is his enemy, or at least not his friend, but he can't help feeling that Jack is also a victim of whoever his handlers are. And maybe that's the kind of soft thinking that's going to lead to a bullet in his brain, but he can't help it. He stretches, listening to his vertebrae crack, and then slides his feet onto the floor. Jack watches these motions, too.

"I'm hungry," Steve says softly, looking at Jack. "Do you want breakfast?"

Jack's eyes dart to his duffel bag, still shoved in the corner of Steve's room. "I have rations."

Steve grimaces; his experience with rations is limited, but on some of his USO tours in Europe, that was what was available when they ate with the troops. "I think we can do better than that. I've got plenty of food in the kitchen, and if we run out we can go to the grocery store. Better save your rations for when you really need them."

Jack's eyebrows drawn together, making the shadows under his eyes look even darker, more like bruises. "I don't know how to cook."

Steve stands up. "Well, seems like this might be a good time to learn." He offers Jack his hand. Jack stares for a long moment, and then he stretches his right hand up and wraps his fingers around Steve's.

Steve pulls him up. It's a start.

*


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve makes a phone call and the plot begins to thicken.

The next few days fall into a sort of weird limbo of routine. They get up, they run, Jack moving easily no matter how hard Steve tries to push. They run errands; Steve shows Jack how to cook. They read or watch TV, or go wander along the beach or through the town. It's surprisingly domestic except for the way they are literally never apart for more than a few minutes at a time and Steve can never forget that Jack might choose any moment to kill him—although, he keeps choosing not to.

On day three, Steve does take Jack to the diner, and when Marina comes over, she says, "Hi, Steve," and looks at him expectantly.

"Marina, this is Jack, my...friend," and then wants to kick himself when her eyes go a little wide at the hesitation he was hoping she wouldn't pick up on. "Jack, this is Marina, my favorite waitress."

She swats at him with the menu. "Steve, honey, you didn't tell me!" She turns a bright, warm smile on Jack, and Steve kind of wants to crawl under the table and die, but Jack is clearly not picking up on the fact that Marina thinks he's Steve's boyfriend; Jack is trying to arrange his face into something like a smile and it's...well, he's trying. "Any friend of Steve's is welcome here," she says, and hands them both menus.

Steve can feel that his face is a bright, tomato red, and Jack narrows his eyes as Marina walks away. "What," he says, a question even though it sounds like a statement.

"It's really not relevant," Steve says. Jack continues to stare at him, his eyes more blue than gray under the fluorescent lights, but no less flinty. But it would be doing him a disservice to leave out vital social context clues, right? Ugh. "She thinks we're dating. It's no big deal," Steve says. 

"Dating," Jack says, voice flat. "A sexual relationship?"

"A romantic relationship," Steve rushes to assure him. How red must his face be? The tips of his ears feel like they're on fire. "I mean, a lot of them are sexual, but they don't have to be."

Jack stares at him. It feels like this is maybe an interrogation technique.

"But yes," Steve admits, "Marina probably thinks we're sleeping together."

"But we are sleeping together," Jack says, frowning. "In the same room."

Steve opens his mouth to explain the difference and realizes that Jack, the guy with hardly any memory to speak of, is trolling him. 

"God damn it," Steve says. "You had me there."

Jack makes the closest thing to a smile Steve's seen so far.

"Does it bother you?" Steve asks.

"Why would it?" Jack shrugs and takes a sip of his water.

"I guess I don't know why it would." Steve thinks of all the times he might have been arrested for being with someone like Jack, back when he had looked sort of like this the first time around.

"It's a good cover," Jack says.

"What?" Steve says.

"I've got to keep you under close observation," Jack says, and he—he smirks at Steve. Steve is so taken aback that he leans back and stares at him. "If we're dating, I have to stick close to you," Jack says.

"That seems...sensible," Steve says, although he's not sure that it really does.

"I'm glad we agree," Jack says. The food comes and thankfully, they don’t return to the subject of Marina’s assumptions.

*

That evening, Steve’s getting ready to cook as Jack watches him. Jack has been watching him cook most meals with undisguised interest, so Steve’s narrated what he’s doing. He tries not to think about Jack not knowing how to cook the same way he tries not to think about Jack not knowing about hot water, because both make him sad. But in trying not to think about it, he seems to wait too long to explain his meal plan. 

"What are you doing?" Jack asks.

Steve looks up, surprised. "Making dinner," he says.

"I know that," Jack says impatiently. "I mean, what are you doing, and why?"

"Oh, okay." Steve looks down at his cutting board. "I've got carrots, celery, and onion. I'm going to dice all of these up—that's called a mirepoix. I'm going to saute the vegetables until they get soft, in bacon grease, and then I'm going to add these lima beans."

"I can help chop," Jack says.

Steve wordlessly passes him the onion. Chopping onions always makes Steve's eyes water.

It's no surprise that Jack's knife skills are impressive. His hand moves quickly, fluidly, over the vegetables, and he has a pile of precisely cut, evenly sized onion before Steve's even done with the celery.

"Thanks," Steve says, and hands him a carrot.

Jack's expression gets a little softer somehow as he chops the vegetables. "I've done this before," he says.

"Do you remember when?" Steve asks. This seems unlike the things that Jack has said about his handlers, although who knows—there may be some horrible memory waiting to ambush them both.

"There was a woman," Jack says quietly. The line between his brows deepens as he concentrates. "And...girls?" He keeps chopping for a long moment, and then he adds, so quietly Steve can barely hear him, "Sisters?"

Steve sets his own knife down. He doesn't know what to say, but he wants to say something.

"Do you remember them?"

Jack looks down at his mismatched hands. He's quiet for so long that Steve figures he doesn't want to talk about it, but then he says, "I wish I did."

"Maybe more of it will come back to you," Steve says. "Like it did just now."

"Maybe," Jack says.

*

Jack is starting to look pretty haggard. The circles under his eyes are deep and bruise-purple.

"I don't think you're getting enough sleep sitting up," Steve says over breakfast. Jack is cooking this morning, and he gives Steve a beleaguered glare over the future tomato, spinach, and mushroom frittata as he pours the eggs over the vegetables. Steve continues to chop up strawberries and cantaloupe.

"I have adequate sleep to be functional," Jack says.

"Okay, maybe," Steve says. "But I don't think that's enough sleep to be healthy."

Jack says, "My handlers—" and then stops.

"I'm not your handler," Steve says. He wants to scream it, really, but he makes himself say it calmly. He doesn’t want to be anything like the people that did this to Jack. 

"I know," Jack says. "You're my mission." Steve beheads a strawberry with perhaps unnecessary force. "And maybe something else too," Jack adds, very quietly.

"You should take the guest room," Steve says. "Whatever it is you think I'll do, I promise I won't do it. I know this is—" Steve stares at the disemboweled cantaloupe as if it could provide the right word. "Awkward," he decides finally, even though that's not quite right. "A strange situation. But I meant it when I said I want to help you."

"I can't..." Jack looks at the frittata, says  _ fuck  _ very quietly, then picks up the cast-iron skillet and moves it to the oven. "I wouldn't be able to sleep."

"Well, you're hardly sleeping now," Steve says.

Jack sighs deeply and pointedly turns to the oven. Steve sweeps the fruit from the cutting board into a bowl. Ten minutes later, the oven beeps. Jack plates the food, and that's the last they say of it.

Jack's read all his books, so after breakfast, they go to the library. The librarians give them both a big smile when they walk in. Jack's very quiet, and he comes across as shy, but Steve thinks it's more that he doesn't really know how to interact with other people in a non-lethal situation. But he's learning, and he smiles at the librarian with the purple hair and flowers tattooed all up her left arm.

"Back again?" she says.

"Read 'em all," Jack says quietly, and gives her his rare, quiet smile.

They leave with a stack of books, and go to the grocery store next. Steve helped Jack look up recipes for them to try, because now that he's tried it, Jack loves to cook. After they load up there, they head back to the house. It's a beautiful day, so Steve takes his watercolors and sketch pad to the deck overlooking the beach, and Jack sits with him and reads while he tries to capture the way the light reflects off the water.

It doesn't go well. Steve hasn't been able to paint the way he used to since he woke up this century. He didn't have the chance to get in more than the occasional sketch while he was on tour with the USO, and while he has plenty of time to paint now, it never flows the way he remembers it doing. He wonders if the serum took that ability from him, or if he was just as never as good as he thought he was.

But he keeps trying, in the hopes that he can regain that feeling. He wants it back, that feeling of being able to create. He thinks it's the closest he's ever really been to happiness. He glares at the mess of blues and white and yellows on the page. His technical skill is getting back to where it was, he thinks, but there's something missing. It doesn't make him feel anything when he looks at it.

"What did that paper ever do to you?"

Steve looks up. Jack is watching him. His place is held open in his book with his metal thumb. "It's not the paper," Steve says, "and it's not the paints. It's me."

"What do you mean?" The breeze coming off the water blows Jack's hair into his eyes and he pushes it away with an impatient huff.

"I just can't paint like I used to," Steve says. "It's like I've forgotten how. Sorry," he adds, because Jack actually has forgotten a lot of things.

"It's okay," Jack says, the corner of his mouth crooking up into a little half-smile. "Maybe you're just not painting the right things."

*

That night, as they're going through their usual nighttime ritual of getting ready for bed, Steve looks at Jack folding himself up into a watchful slouch on the floor. He looks exhausted, even if he thinks he's functional, and suddenly Steve can't stand for one minute longer the thought of him sleeping sitting up and the attendant aches and pains that that must cause when there's a perfectly good half of a bed going to waste on the other side of Steve.

"You can sleep up here," Steve says abruptly.

"What?" Jack looks up.

"It's a king-sized bed," Steve says, "and I don't take up that much room."

Jack looks flabbergasted. "I don't," he starts. " _ You  _ don't," he goes on. "Why would you want that?" he finishes.

"You could fit my whole wardrobe in the bags under your eyes," Steve says. "That can't be comfortable. Maybe I just don't like seeing you suffer."

Jack looks at him like he suddenly started speaking Greek. He stares for so long that Steve wonders if he somehow inadvertently offended him. Maybe he's fine with people thinking they're dating, but it's a whole different thing to share this vulnerable a space with someone, even if you aren't an assassin with a traumatizing past.

"It doesn't make you nervous?" Jack says hesitantly.

"About you?" Steve laughs. "Look, buddy, if you decide to kill me in my sleep, I don't think it's going to make much of a difference whether you start from two feet away or six."

Jack stands up in one abrupt motion. "Are you sure?"

Steve doesn't say anything, just pulls down the quilt and sheet on the other side of the bed. Jack looks at him for a moment longer, and Steve can't begin to imagine what's going on behind those pale blue eyes. Then, Jack crosses to the bed and climbs in.

He pulls the blanket up over his chin. It's... Well, it's cute is what it is. Steve knows that he should probably be thinking of this man as a threat first and a person second, but sue him, Jack is good-looking and frankly kind of vulnerable, and that combination is catnip. Steve thought he was handsome before he knew that he was an assignment to Jack, and unfortunately, knowing that Jack is a deadly weapon aimed at him has done nothing to make him less attractive. And with the blanket pulled up and his hair spread across the pillow, he looks unfortunately adorable.

But that's just something for Steve to think in the privacy of his own mind, not anywhere ever that Jack could hear him. He doesn't know if Jack is really all that sleepy yet, but his eyelids have drifted closed, and his long lashes look ink-dark against his pale cheek.

Steve rolls over on his side of the bed. There's plenty of room between the two of them. It's fine.

"Good night, Jack," Steve murmurs. His only answer is Jack's breathing evening out.

*

Steve wakes up, comfortable and warm. Comfortable and warm is nothing particularly new; he tends to run hot, and kick off the blankets in his sleep, but, he realizes, awareness slowly filtering in as he wakes up, not usually because of another person's body heat. His head is pillowed against a broad chest, and a muscular arm is wrapped around him. Steve wakes up in one sudden rush at that, and realizes that his own arm is thrown over a broad torso, and his calves are tangled between Jack's calves.

Steve opens his eyes. In his immediate field of vision is black cotton, Jack's t-shirt. It smells like Steve's detergent and, well, there's no other way to say it—it smells like Jack. Not bad, just the warm, human smell of the other man. If Steve is honest with himself, and he tries to be honest with himself, it smells really good.

Steve tries to stay relaxed and easy, but he must stiffen, or maybe the change in his breathing wakes Jack, because a moment later, Jack sucks in a sharp breath and his arm around Steve tenses.

"It's okay," Steve says. "We just...rolled over in our sleep. It's fine."

Jack's grip eases a little at that, but his heart is beating fast beneath Steve's head. Steve starts to pull his arm back off of Jack, and Jack makes a small noise, so Steve stops moving.

"Jack?" he says.

"I don't remember the last time I touched someone else like this." Jack's voice is hoarse with sleep. "But I think I did, a long time ago."

It feels good to touch him like this. It's nice where their bodies are warm against each other, the feel of Jack's heart beating, of the blood moving in his veins—it's all very human, and Steve didn't expect the feel of it to hit him so hard. And if it's affecting him so much, who is just lonely, how must Jack be feeling? Steve can't imagine that his handlers have touched him kindly often.

"It was a long time ago for me too," Steve says quietly. "Whatever file they gave you—what did it tell you about me?"

Jack's fingers grip Steve a little more tightly. Somehow it's easier to talk like this, Steve's head turned into Jack's chest, no need to make eye contact or see whatever Jack's face is doing. Probably blank stoicism or mild amusement, his go-to expressions.

"It was mostly photographs," Jack says quietly. "Everything they do, they tell me, is to establish order. So they told me all the things you did to bring about chaos. Documented incidents from World War II mostly. They said now that you were back, you would sow chaos wherever you went." He turns his head, and the bottom of his chin brushes against Steve's hair. "But you haven't, have you? All you do is go running, and paint."

The words aren't meant as an accusation, but they sting anyway. Steve laughs bitterly. "All I wanted was to help," he says. "But I've never been allowed to do that."

"Will you tell me?" Jack says against his hair. "Will you tell me how you got here? How you got from World War II to now?"

"Sure, Jack." Steve has to take a minute to settle himself and get his thoughts in order. "What they told you, your handlers—it wasn't true. It was never true. Some friends of mine told stories after I was gone that made it seem as though I did these things, but the fact of the matter is that for most of the war I was really nothing more than a performer. I fought Nazis everyday—on stage. But all of that was just to raise money or morale."

"I don't understand." Jack's breath is warm against Steve's scalp. "I was told you were enhanced."

"I was," Steve says. "I am, I guess."

"Why go to the trouble and expense of making you if they were not going to use you?"

"They gave me an experimental serum. I was weak. I've been sickly my whole life. But the man who developed the serum, Dr. Erskine, he thought having a good heart was more important than my physical health. And it turned out, none of the physical problems mattered, because the serum got rid of all of them. I was suddenly a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier, and not only were are all my physical problems gone as though they never existed, I couldn't get sick. But they were planning on making an army of guys like me, and not five minutes after I got the serum, an agent of Hydra shot Dr. Erskine. He was the only one who knew how to make the serum, so I was one of a kind. Or almost one of a kind, anyway."

Jack tenses under Steve's hands, and Steve represses the urge to hold him tighter. He's afraid if he moves, or asks for too much, this strange confessional bubble of closeness will pop and vanish. "What do you mean?" Jack says.

"There was a Nazi who took the serum, too. It changed him and ways it didn't change me. They called him the Red Skull, because that's what he looked like once he took the serum."

Jack relaxes, just slightly. If he doesn't want to say he's enhanced out loud, Steve can't make him, but it doesn't take a genius to see that it's true. 

"I don't remember much," Jack says. "But these last few days, with you, I keep remembering more. You don't treat me like a handler, and my brain just doesn't—I don't know what to do with that."

"You don't have to know what to do with it yet," Steve says. "From what you've said, it sounds like you've been treated like a weapon for a long time. But I guess the question from here on out is, what are you going to decide to do? What are you going to choose?"

Jack sighs deeply, and his chest moves under Steve's head. "You said you could help me. Did you mean it?"

Hope uncurls in Steve's chest tiny, fragile thing. "I meant it. I might not really be Captain America anymore, but I have some friends that will help us. You don't have to go back to your handlers. You don't have to be a weapon."

"I don't want to be," Jack says softly. Steve can feel his fingers clench into a fist around the thin cotton of his t-shirt. 

"Let me call my friend Natasha—she'll help us.

"Us?" As with so many of Jack's expressions, Steve can't really decipher this one, but if he had to put a name to it, he thinks maybe Jack is feeling a little hopeful too. 

"Yeah,  _ us. _ I'm not letting you do this alone."

"Why?" Jack sits up, and Steve takes one second to mourn the loss of his warmth before he sits up too. "Why would you help me?"

"I'm not trying to say it's exactly the same thing, but you and I do share a few experiences. I know what it's like to not really know what's going on in the world you've woken up to. I know what it's like to feel alone. I don't want that for you." 

Jack stares at Steve. His hair is sleep-rumpled, a mass of tangles sticking up on one side where it lay against the pillow. His black t-shirt is stretched over muscles that are big even when he's as relaxed as he is now. Maybe Steve should see a killer when he looks at him, but what he sees is someone lost, someone who was used against his will; someone who needs help.

"Thank you," Jack says, finally.

"Of course," Steve says, and gets up to find his phone.

*

Natasha is not pleased to hear from Steve under these circumstances. She listens thoughtfully when he explains that he has an operative who needs her help. She asks incisive, subtle questions, and tells him that she's on her way and they'll discuss it in person, he presumes because she'll know it's secure, even though he called her on the flip phone she gave him.

"Steve," she says, "you didn't mention how you came to be in possession of an asset that wants to defect."

"First of all," Steve says, looking over his shoulder at Jack, who is watching him intently from his side of the couch, "don't call him an asset. Second of all, he's not in my  _ possession _ , he's staying with me. Maybe I should just tell you the whole story when you get here."

"Steve." Natasha has a way of making a pause for thought seem like the most menacing thing in the world. "Did he attack you? Are you in danger?"

"Nat, I'm fine," Steve says. "I'm not in any danger." Jack shoots him an unreadable look, but Steve's not worried. He thinks Jack meant what he said, and if he didn't, the best time to kill him wouldn't be on the phone with a witness. 

"Try not to do anything too stupid until I get there," she says.

When Natasha arrives, Steve and Jack are watching a documentary about wildlife, narrated by a man with a very soothing British voice. She lets herself in with the key that Steve gave her. Both of them hear the key in the lock over the narration about the life cycles of jellyfish; Steve feels Jack goes tense as a bowstring beside him.

"So what have you found, Steve?"

They both turn to look at her. She's dressed for trouble in the Black Widow costume, and while she doesn't have any guns drawn at the moment, Steve knows that she’s armed to the teeth, and her widow’s bites are always on her. Honestly, Jack probably has at least six knives on his person as well. Steve is definitely underdressed in the concealed weapons department in this company.

Steve stands, and Jack stands with him, and then Natasha does draw her gun. "Steve, get back," she says, her voice tight and harsh.

"It's fine," Steve says. Jack hasn't moved, but Steve can feel the tension radiating off of him. "Natasha, this is Jack."

"No, it's not. That's the Winter Soldier." Her gun doesn't waver. It's a little surreal to see the threat of violence in his living room, although Steve supposes that he's been living with it for the last week. But it hasn't been the guns-drawn type of violence, just the hovering threat of it, and this feels different. 

Jack's eyebrows draw together in an uncertain frown, and he looks from Natasha to Steve. "I—sometimes they called me the soldier." 

"You shot me." Natasha's mouth is tight.

Jack looks at Steve. Later, Steve will remember that—that Jack looked to him when he was uncertain. But at the moment, all he wants to do is assure him that it's okay.

"He doesn't remember," Steve says.

The gun in Natasha's hand doesn't move. "Are you sure?"

"There's a lot I don't remember,” Jack says. “Steve says you can help me if I don't want to go back to my handlers. Is it true?"

Natasha stares at him for a long moment, then, in one fluid motion, holsters her gun. "Yes, I can help you." She gives Steve a long look. "Why don't you tell me everything you know?"

"It's not as much as you might think." Jack runs a hand through his hair. It's a strangely vulnerable gesture, or maybe it's just that Steve saw that hair tangled across his pillow only a few hours ago.

Natasha asks pointed questions, and Jack answers as best he can, Steve can tell it's not as comprehensive as Natasha might have wished, but it's more than Steve expected, honestly: locations, a few names. 

"It's not—" Jack stops, frustrated. "I know it's not much."

"It's okay," Natasha says. Steve thinks she's warmed to Jack at least a little over the course of the interrogation, though it's hard to say. 

"They didn't let me remember." Jack's voice is raw, and when his eyes meet Steve's, Steve aches for the pain he sees there. 

"It's all right, soldier," Natasha says. "I understand better than you think.” Steve wonders, not for the first time, what tragedies are hidden in her past. 

Natasha looks as crisp as ever when they stop after a few hours but Steve can tell that both he and Jack are wiped out.

"That's enough of that," he says. "None of us are going anywhere. There's plenty of time to keep going tomorrow."

"If you're sure," she says.

"I'm positive." Jack’s looking at the floor, so Steve can’t catch his eye. He has to look directly at Natasha instead and get the full weight of her disapproval when he says, "You can stay in the guestroom, Nat.”

She looks from Jack to Steve and frowns. "What about him?"

"He'll bunk with me," he says. "Don't worry about it."

"Steve—"

"Don't worry about it," he says as firmly as he can. "Nothing that hasn't been happening anyway."

Her forehead wrinkles as her eyebrows draw together into a knot of unhappiness. But she doesn't have to like it, just has to live with it. She seems to realize that, because she rolls her shoulders back and looks him in the eye. Then she turns to Jack and says, "He better wake up in the same state of health that he goes to sleep." 

Jack's expression is uninterpretable, but Steve makes a face at her.

Later, when Natasha has gone to bed, or at least to the guest room, and Jack and Steve are in Steve's room again, Jack says, "I'm not going to hurt you."

He's standing by the bed in his sleep clothes, having just turned off the overhead light, and Steve is lying down on what he has already come to think of as his side of the bed.

"I didn't think you were, at this point," Steve says cautiously.

Jack gets on the bed and carefully slides into the sheets. He looks at the ceiling. "I made the decision. It's my choice."

"Yeah?" Steve reaches out to the bedside table and turns off the light. The two of them are lit only by the faint glow from the bathroom, but it's enough for Steve to at least see the dim outline of Jack's face.

Jack turns on his side so he can look at Steve. His eyes are a faint blur of color in the darkness, but Steve can see that he is watching him closely. "I'm not a threat to you, Steve, not anymore. I won't be—not by my own choice."

Steve's heart aches for him. In the dark, he can reach across and put his hand on Jack's bicep—his flesh arm, warm and yielding beneath Steve's fingers. "I know, buddy. I know."

"How do you know?" Jack's voice is low, uncertain. "How did you trust me not to hurt you?"

"I didn't, at first," he admits. Jack's muscle tenses a little beneath his touch, but he doesn't withdraw. "But then—I could see you trying. I could see that you didn't remember how to be human anymore, because no one had treated you like a person for so long."

"No one but you," Jack murmurs very softly.

"It made me want to try," Steve tells him. "It made me think you weren't someone I had to stop, but someone I could—" It sounds stupid, when he tries to say it. "Help." He swallows, hard. "Save."

Jack's breathing is uneven, and Steve thinks that both of them are having their own kind of emotion, in the dark, next to each other. "Steve," Jack says after a moment, and there's something about the way he says Steve's name that makes the ache in his chest a little sharper. "Could we—like last night?" He spreads his arms a little wider, as if Steve needed clarification.

"Yeah," Steve says, and burrows into Jack's side, putting his head on his chest instead of against his metal shoulder. "I like this too."

Jack sighs and brings his right arm across, pulling Steve a little tighter. Steve can feel his chest move with the exhalation, the metronome-steady beat of his heart. It feels good to touch another person like this, the warmth of their bodies sinking into each other, the press of skin against skin a comfort. Steve doesn't know what it says about him that the only person he's done this with since he woke up in this century is this man, who's got more issues than even Steve does himself, but maybe that makes it safe in its own way. They're both out of sync, drifting in a time and place they don't quite fit—whether like Steve, displaced from his time, or Jack, who had his time stolen from him.

Steve feels Jack draw in a breath before he speaks. "I like it when you call me that."

Steve tries to think back over the conversation, but he can't remember what he said. "When I call you what?"

"You called me buddy." Beneath Steve's ear, Jack's heart stutters an erratic beat. "I don't think Jack was my name."

Steve suddenly feels guilty, because when he pulled that name out of the air, he was thinking that he wanted him to go away, and that's not what he wants, not anymore. "Tell me what you want me to call you and I will."

"I still can't remember, but I think my name was James. When we cook, when I remember my family, that's the name they call me." Jack— _ James  _ takes another deep breath, and Steve's head moves with it. "Would you call me that?"

"Yeah." Steve is unable to resist giving him a squeeze. "Yeah, James. Whatever you want."

They don't speak any more, drifting in a comfortable cocoon of warmth. As Steve drifts off, he feels fingers running through his hair.

*

When Steve wakes, it's to sudden movement and quiet but furious Russian being spoken over his head.

He tries to sit up, still sleep-bleary, but James's metal arm is folded protectively around his head, and he mostly just sort of head butts James’s armpit.

"I'm not going to hurt him," Natasha spits from the doorway. "I'm here to help. To help  _ you _ , remember?"

James says something else in Russian, his tone easing a little and his hand relaxing, letting Steve up. Natasha replies in the same language, and if she doesn't sound exactly easier, she's not as mad either, as far as Steve can tell. She always sounds a little angry when she talks Russian anyhow. 

"It was instinct. I get confused." James uncurls from his protective shell around Steve and Steve sits up rubbing his eyes. His heart is beating staccato fast, and it's not how he'd have chosen to wake up. Nothing like the day before, when he'd been able to hold onto James and speak confidences.

"It's all right," Natasha says. "I'll be more careful in the future." She looks at Steve with one eyebrow arched high, and he wonders what she saw when she walked in; the two of them clinging to each other like children? He's sorry he missed it, if so.

"Did something happen?" Steve sits up a little straighter so he can look at her.

"I heard from Fury." Natasha shakes a phone in her hand, an older flip model like the one she gave Steve. "He wants to meet up."

"Good," Steve says. He glances at James, who looks, possibly, a little apprehensive. "Nick Fury is the Director of SHIELD. He'll be able to help us figure this out."

"Good." James runs his right hand through his disheveled hair, then looks at Natasha. "I'm sorry. About before."

"It's okay," Natasha says. "I understand more than you might think about that kind of thing. I defected once too."

"Is that what I'm doing?" James sounds a little tired.

"No," Natasha says. "That implies that you had a choice about what you did, and you didn't. Neither one of us did."

"Nat," Steve says, as gently as he can. This is maybe a conversation that both of them need to have, but he feels off balance and awkward in his pajamas, in bed with James. "Give us just a minute to get dressed. It won't take long, and we'll be ready to move."

Natasha nods and leaves the room, closing the door behind her.

"I'm sorry," Steve says. He lets himself sag a little, leaning into James. "I just wasn't ready to have that conversation in my sleep pants."

James laughs a little, a small sound, and his chest moves with it. Steve loves that sound, he realizes; he wants to hear it again and again. "I'm the one who needs to apologize. I didn't mean to react like that."

"It's fine, Steve says, surprised. "Like you said, it was instinct. Besides, how can I be mad when your instinct was to protect me?"

To Steve's surprise, James blushes at this. "It feels good to have that be my first reaction. It wasn't—violence."

"Yeah?" Steve leans in a little closer, nudges him with his shoulder. "This'll be a good thing, James, getting you free of your handlers. You get to choose who you want to be."

"Thanks." James hesitates a minute and then circles Steve shoulders with his metal arm, pulls him in a little tighter.

Steve allows himself the luxury of leaning into the embrace for a few long moments, of feeling James's warm, strong body against his own. Then he sits up, and James's hand falls away from his shoulder. "Come on. Let's get our things together. Natasha's waiting."

*

It doesn't take that long to pack a go bag. Steve hesitates as he zips up his bag, looking around the beach house. Maybe he should call the rental company, cancel his stay; but he hopes—he allows himself to hope—that maybe he'll be able to come back once they have this settled. Maybe James will want to come back with him. It's not like he's hurting for money anyway, so there's no reason  _ not  _ to keep renting it, at least for now.

The three of them pile into Natasha's nondescript sedan, and Steve feels odd that James is sitting in the back seat, although he doesn't seem to mind. He's quiet, watching the scenery go by, listening to the music Natasha insists they play for Steve’s education, or Steve and Natasha catching up with each other. Natasha gives Steve a little shit about his boring lifestyle, and James makes a soft, almost breathless laugh at that. Steve smiles, thinking of James calling his routine dull. Steve asks Natasha what she's been up to, and she tells him that she and Clint have been taking swing dancing classes, but she's had to let it slide for the last few weeks since Clint's been away. Steve assumes she means on a mission, but that she doesn't want to bring it up in front of James, so he doesn't ask where Clint is.

It's not that long of a drive from Wilmington to D.C., only about two hours, but she doesn't drive them to the Triskelion. Instead, she winds through the streets and drives to what Steve recognizes as a SHIELD safe house. It's not fancy, but Steve assumes this way they can be sure that it's not bugged. He trusts Natasha to know what she's doing, anyway, so he follows her inside and he and James set their bags at the foot of the stairs.

Nick Fury and Maria Hill are waiting in the living room. Fury is as implacable as Steve has ever seen him, and Hill as impeccable. Both their expressions are flat and unreadable, and Fury looks at James assessingly.

"So this is the Winter Soldier," he drawls.

"I prefer James," James says.

Natasha puts a file on the table and slides it across to fury and Hill. "James's debriefing," she says. "Given the circumstances, I thought it best to keep this to hard copy."

Fury's single eye narrows as he pulls the folder closer. He picks it up and starts flipping through Natasha's neat handwriting, Hill reading over his shoulder.

"If this is true…" Fury's lips thin.

"If this is true, Hydra was never defeated," Hill says. "It rebuilt itself on American soil."

"It should be easy enough to confirm," Natasha says before Steve can do more than bristle at the implication that James is lying. It's why he'd have made a better soldier than a spy, he supposes. He knows that they're not even at  _ trust but verify _ territory with James, whereas Steve just...believes him. But then again, he saw the transformation from the soldier to the person, watched James's memories come bubbling up to the surface, while Fury and Hill are having to take it on trust. Not a readily-available commodity for people in their line of work. Natasha believes, he thinks; but then, she said she'd gone through something similar. He's sorry he never asked about it, sorry that he doesn't know where she came from. He'll do better, he thinks. When this is over, he’ll be the friend to her that she is to him.

Maria frowns at the documents and looks up, eyes sharp. "Three of these locations are very close to SHIELD properties. I can't believe that's a coincidence."

Fury's perpetual frown deepens. "Sounds like we've got a leak somewhere. I don't like that."

"Best to keep this close," Natasha says. She looks around the room. "The people in this room close, maybe."

"Until we find our leak," Hill says.

James steps forward, looks at the documents upside down across the coffee table. "This one,” he says, and points at one of the locations. "A lot of computers, communications equipment. This is a base of operations. There will be information to collect."

Fury scrutinizes his face, but James is still looking at the paper, and doesn't seem to notice—although Steve wouldn't place any bets on that. "Guards?"

James nods. "Two teams of two, if nothing's happening. More, if the base is active." He bites his bottom lip, and at first Steve doesn't even know why he finds that so endearing, but then he realizes that it's because the man of a little over a week ago would not have shown any signs of uncertainty. "I can draw a floor plan of the parts I'm familiar with. It won't be all of it—only what I was confined to."

Fury and Hill exchange a quick look, and then Hill nods. "That would be very helpful, James, thank you."

James takes a piece of paper and a pencil from Fury and starts drawing, labeling rooms with precise, neat writing that tugs at something in Steve's memories, although he can't quite pinpoint it. Fury watches his hands move, and then says, "We'll send you and Agent Romanoff, with Hill on comms running the op."

"And Steve," James says without looking up from the paper. "He's my handler, so let him handle me."

Steve bites back a laugh, but if Hill or Fury find the phrasing amusing, they don't show it.

Fury looks at Steve questioningly. "Are you up for it, Rogers?"

Steve just nods, but Natasha says quietly, "He's always been up for it, sir."

"I am aware of your opinion, agent." Fury frowns down at the paper. "Let's take a few days to establish surveillance, and then move from there."

"Yes, sir." Steve's not sure how he feels about being an active agent for Fury, but he finds that if he thinks about it as being an active agent for  _ James _ , all of his qualms fall away. What's been done to him is the kind of injustice that Steve's never been able to overlook; and it's not like he'd never miss a chance to ruin a Nazi's day. He looks up to see James watching him, and smiles. He'd do a lot harder things then break into a Hydra safe house for the tentative smile he gets in return.

*

The vast majority of surveillance is very, very boring. Steve, James, and Natasha spend a lot of time in bland cars and in an unused warehouse across the streets from the Hydra base. They spend a lot of time watching doors and windows with not much happening behind them, occasionally livened by people coming or going. Not many: it doesn't take long before Steve and Natasha agree with James's initial assessments that the base is inactive right now.

"It's mostly where they resupplied," James murmurs, "but sometimes they kept me there too."

They're sitting in the empty warehouse. It's dusty in a way that would have had Steve in the thirties coughing his lungs out, but it doesn't bother him now. The windows are grimy and they haven't done much more than wipe a few corners clean in hopes that the dirt will keep anyone from seeing in. Natasha is looking at the base across the street through a scope in the clean corner of the window. James has a notepad they've been using to record the times of the comings and goings, and on which he's going over the layout, trying to wring more memories out of his brain.

"Kept you there?" Steve is mostly watching James draw. He does it like he does everything: with efficient competence. There is a furrow in his brow as he concentrates that Steve is trying and failing not to find endearing.

James grimaces and looks up to meet Steve's gaze. His eyes are blue in this light, and at the moment, dark with an unpleasant memory. "Like putting away a tool between uses. Why didn't I ever try to resist them?"

"James—" Steve isn't sure what to say, but he has to say something to combat the look in those eyes.

"You couldn't," Natasha says crisply. "They condition you, James. There's no shame in that, not for you. I don't know what they did, but I'm guessing that you were brainwashed at the very least. At some point you're going to want to tell someone what they did to you. It doesn't have to be me. But I went through something similar, so I understand at least some."

Steve doesn't say it out loud, but he remembers James in the shower and he thinks:  _ tortured _ . The word for what he was is tortured.

"Why do I have to talk to anyone about it?" James says. The pencil lead snaps against the paper and he curses quietly in Russian and clicks out another length of lead.

"As opposed to what, exactly? Just pretending it never happened?" Natasha doesn't turn from the window, but Steve can imagine her expression; cool and not exactly condescending, but clearly not ready to put up with the speaker's bullshit. "I don't think the kind of things you went through are the kinds of things that can be papered over. I think you need to dig them out, into the sunlight."

James is quiet for a minute, and then he huffs a little laugh. "Maybe so. Let's get through this first."

Steve joins Natasha at the window after they've been quiet for a few minutes. He doesn't like to think of the kinds of things that he knows happened to James. He suspects that there's a lot more that he can't even guess at. At the same time, he wants to be the one that James talks to about it, and how ridiculous is that? He's not a psychologist. He wouldn't be able to help. He just wants to be the one he talks to. It's selfish. Maybe he wants it because of his own history; because here is another man out of time.

Maybe he just wants some part of James to keep to himself.

*

It's a long three days. However necessary it is, the work is dull. They sleep in shifts, curled up in sleeping bags; Steve misses sleeping on top of James. He wonders if James misses it too. The food is not great, prepackaged meals or fast food, and Steve finds that he misses cooking, also, although he wouldn't have said it was a thing he was that invested in. He's suspicious of himself, wondering if that's another thing he misses doing with James.

After three days they have a pretty solid idea of what time the guards change shifts. They also have a plan, or at least the rudiments of one; the best they can scrape together with the information that they have. Steve at least is eager to get in there and get it over with, ready to get more information on the people who use James like a weapon. He knows this won't be the end of it—this is only the beginning of it—but he wants to get started. He wants to see James a free man. He wants to help him recover who he used to be. He wants—a lot of things, if it comes down to it.

There's only so much they can plan for an operation of this nature. They don't have a lot of people to direct to different areas of the base. They're going to do a focused strike, the three of them sticking together and watching each other's backs. They're prepared for those two shifts of two guards, ready for whatever threats they might present. Or as ready as they can be, anyway. Steve doesn't have a lot of experience in this sort of thing, but he knows as well as anyone that plans rarely remain unchanged once they're put into motion.

James is their tank and has a metal arm besides, so he's going first. Steve and Natasha will flank him, guarding his sides and his back. They're going to strike fast and hit hard. Steve knows he's the weakest of them physically, but he's not exactly harmless anymore, and he's armed with handguns. And of course, Natasha has shown him all manner of tricks for engaging with a larger opponent in hand to hand combat.

The door is locked, armed with an alarm system, but Natasha disables it easily with a small handheld device that Steve suspects came from Tony. James slides in, moving quietly and gracefully. He moves differently in his tac gear, less of a stride and more of a predator's stalk. Natasha and Steve flow in after him, following as he takes the path he drew for them to the communications room.

They meet the first pair of guards in the hallway, and they hardly have time to react before James is attacking.

"The asset—" one of them gets out, and then James's hand is at his throat. James pushes him against the wall and metal fingers tighten around his neck, choking him into unconsciousness. The second guard tries to get his walkie-talkie to his mouth, but Natasha is on him in an instant, leaping up to get her legs around his neck. Steve wonders fleetingly if there's something about being brainwashed into being a bad guy that makes you want to strangle everyone. Regardless, Natasha's guard falls only a moment after James's. They both look to Steve for a split second, and Steve pulls zip ties out of the pocket of his tactical vest and they restrain the guards before dragging them into an office. At Steve's gesture, James leads them further down the hall, and they reach the communications room in short order.

Steve doesn't like it, but it makes the most sense for him to stand guard. Natasha is the one with the computer expertise, and James knows where everything is, so Steve positions himself at the door, keeping watch for the other guard team. He can feel his elevated pulse, his heartbeat thumping in his neck. James and Natasha murmur behind him, and the faint sound of their voices and Natasha clicking away at a keyboard are soothing. In less than ten minutes, they have what they came for. Natasha tucks the USB stick into a pocket on her uniform, and they get ready to head out.

James retraces their steps, leading them back out the way they came in. They're nearly to the exit when the other team of guards finds them. The first man draws his gun and shoots at James. James raises his metal arm and blocks the bullet. It falls to the ground with a clank. He moves quickly, efficiently, without wasted movement. The first guard raises his gun, hand visibly trembling, while the second is speaking furiously into a walkie-talkie. 

James stalks toward the first man, bearing down on him like a hunting cat, and the guy looks about two seconds away from shitting himself, which is completely understandable if you consider the way James walks—but then the second man says something in Russian. James's eyes go wide and suddenly, instead of looking like death in black tactical gear, he looks absolutely terrified. The man says another word in Russian, and Natasha breathes, "Trigger words," and Steve doesn't know exactly what those are, but he's never heard Natasha sound so rattled. He ducks around James and launches himself at the guy with the walkie-talkie. Natasha curses behind him, but Steve is using everything she's ever taught him about hand-to-hand combat to get in close. The man's trying hard not to lose his walkie-talkie and he throws a punch at Steve, but he's distracted and the motion is erratic; it's easy to duck under it. Steve slaps the walkie-talkie out of the man's hand and they both dive for it. The man's expression is somewhere between furious and terrified. Steve gets behind him and manages to get his arm around him in a choke hold. The guy struggles, but Steve is stubborn and tenacious, and he keeps his hold long enough that the man goes limp. Steve looks up as Natasha throws him a zip tie from one of the many pockets on her uniform. He restrains the guy and checks up on his friends.

James relaxes as Steve restrains the man, and he strides forward to the guy with the gun, his expression murderous. The guy tries to get the gun up again to shoot him, but James bats it away as though it's nothing with his metal arm, and punches the guy with the other.

The guy staggers back and Natasha is there, twisting his arm up behind his back and pulling another zip tie out.

"Hill and Fury are going to be awfully interested in what these guys have to say," she comments.

"Even if they're just guards?" Steve asks.

"Oh, you'd be surprised what people pick up." She takes out her phone and steps to the side, speaking in low tones. Steve's hearing is good enough to pick up most of what she's saying, and he suspects James's is too; she's informing Fury about the outcome of the mission. Steve suspects they'll all get to debrief at length when they get back, so he doesn't listen in too closely.

"Are you all right?" he says quietly to James. Steve isn't going to forget that book of sudden terror at the Russian words anytime soon.

"I am now," James says. He shakes his shoulders, a quick motion, like a horse shaking off the fly. "I don't remember what those words do, but I know that it's bad."

"Natasha said something about trigger words," Steve says. "I've never heard that before."

"It is what it sounds like." James runs a hand through his hair. "I don't know what it would have made me do, but it would've been bad. I don't want to hurt you. I decided not to."

"I know." Steve wants to take his hand so badly, but he feels like that's not the best idea while they're on a mission like this.

For one thing, they don’t really touch outside of the bed—where they cuddle like, Steve supposes, two men who hardly ever touch anyone else. For another, he still doesn’t quite know what James thinks about their touching in front of anyone else. Furthermore, he supposes, it’s not the business of these random Hydra agents what they do between themselves.

“Back to headquarters,” Natasha says, and the three of them start pulling the bodies to the garage, where Hill can help them pick them up. 

*>

There's some down time, while Nat and Fury and Hill decode the information. Neither Steve nor James is invited to help with that, whether because they're not trusted with the information or not trusted to be useful, Steve's not sure. Probably a little bit of both.

They've been provided with rooms in the safe house, one each for Steve, James, and Natasha. They're not exactly hotel quality, more mattresses on the floor and some basic supplies, but Steve will take it. Better discomfort in a shithole than being hunted down at the Four Seasons.

They go their separate ways at night. Steve brushes his teeth in ice-cold water from a faucet that squeaks, then curls himself up on his twin bed mattress, the blankets thin and chill on top of him. He twists from side to side, trying to find a comfortable lump. From whichever room is next to him, he hears running water, then a flushing toilet. For fuck's sake, the walls are so thin. He gets up to drink some water, lies down again, gets back up to piss and brush his teeth again, lies down, turns over, and lets out a loud, frustrated sigh.

Ten seconds later, there's a knock on his door, and Steve's up on his feet before he even thinks about it. He opens the door, and there, of course with a feeling of inevitability, is James. He's wearing gray sweatpants and a tight white shirt. Steve is wearing much the same thing, but boy, does it fit differently. On Steve, all of it is loose. On James, everything stretches over him. The shirt spans his broad chest, pulling taut over his pecs and shoulders. The pants strain over his wide thighs. Steve has to lick his lips, and unfortunately, James's gaze follows his every move.

"Steve?" James says hesitantly. "Can I come in?"

"Of course,” Steve says hoarsely. "Come on in." He watches as James slinks in, watches himself shut the door. "You know you don't have to watch over me anymore, right? I'm not going to get away, all right? I'm not going anywhere." 

"Yeah," James says, and his mouth crooks up into the lopsided smile he's making more and more often. "Maybe I just want to watch over you. Maybe I just like being close to you."

Steve's heart is beating fast. Really fast. James didn't have to say this. James chose to, and that hits him right in the center of the chest. He peels the blanket away next to him. The cold air raises the hairs on his thighs.

"Then come on in," he says, as boldly as he can, and James smiles and slides into the bed next to him.

It feels as natural as anything when James pulls him to his side, regardless of his metal arm, and as natural as anything when Steve turns his face toward him. James is watching him, and something inside of Steve shifts at the look on his face, open and more expressive than it was a week ago. Steve doesn't know what it says about him that this makes him so happy, but it does. Steve wants to see who James will be if he has the chance to keep becoming himself, if he doesn't have to fear being turned back into a thing.

Steve puts his hand on James's chest and rests his head on his shoulder. James pulls him closer, wrapping his arm around him. Steve closes his eyes and breathes in the scent of him, so familiar now, letting himself relax in the heat of his body. James's heartbeat slows under his ear as their breathing synchronizes. Steve allows himself the luxury of enjoying it as he drifts off to sleep

*

"Steve," Natasha says. "What's going on?"

“Nat…” James is in the shower. Steve has already cleaned up and changed. Natasha had woken them up abruptly, the door slamming open, her gun drawn, ready to protect Steve from James if need be. When his room had been empty, she'd looked in Steve's, and had found them both. Steve refused to be embarrassed—it wasn't anyone's business but theirs. But Natasha isn't asking to embarrass him; she's asking as his friend.

"Steve," she says, "what the fuck?"

"I don't know what to tell you," he says, looking from side to side. "It's not… Whatever you think, it's not what you think."

Steve sighs and Natasha moves a little closer. She rests her hand on his shoulder. "I'm worried," she says. "You're so invested in this guy." 

"I know I'm invested. I know it's not—" Steve waves his hand in the air. "—normal, whatever that is. But, Nat, I just want to help him. He's had these things done to him, these terrible things that remade him. They took his memory. They turned him into a weapon. They—He had to remember hot showers. It's not the same—of course, it's not the same. But I understand feeling lost. Displaced. And—" He looks down at his hands, the fingers long and still strong, but smaller than the giant paws he'd had, for a time. Not a weapon, or perhaps, a weapon that never saw use, but still... "I understand being remade."

"Of course you do," she says softly. "And I do too." She squeezes his shoulder and lets her hand fall away.

"I've never asked," he says, "and you don't have to tell me if you don't want to. But, Nat—what happened to you?"

"I was like him," she says. "An assassin. There was a program in Russia—the Black Widow program." Steve lifts an eyebrow; he's never really thought about her call sign before. "They trained us from childhood to be perfect weapons. Clint was sent to kill me, but he brought me in instead. I know what it's like to have done terrible things, and I know what it's like to rebuild a personality from nothing. I want to help him too—but I don't want you to get hurt." She shoots him a tense smile. "And you know, that still doesn't explain why he didn't sleep in his own room last night."

A wave of affection for her sweeps over him. "I really like who you are now," he tells her, and has the distinct pleasure of seeing the Black Widow briefly look bashful before she gets control of her face.

"I like you, too. Stop deflecting."

He shrugs. "I don't know what to tell you. We sleep better together." He can feel a flush heating his face, but he's not embarrassed. "I don't think either one of us has spent a whole lot of time touching other people the last several years." He thinks about James relaxing under his hands, the way his breathing slows next to him. "At least, not in a pleasant way."

"Just be careful," she says, and Steve has to laugh.

"Not my style," he says.

She smiles at him. "I didn't really think it was."


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our heroes find out what Hydra is up to.

"The good news is, your boy's telling the truth and is unlikely to be a Hydra plant," Fury says, glancing at James, who sits impassively at a chair, his face betraying nothing. The five of them are in the common room of the safe house, and Fury has a stack of papers in front of him. The contents of the thumb drive, decoded. "The bad news is," Fury continues, "that's all the good news. The bad news is really bad. SHIELD is compromised, to what extent remains to be seen. The US government is compromised. We're on our own for this."

"We're going to have to go back in to work at some point," Hill says. "Fury and I, at least. Romanoff, you're officially on a mission in Eastern Europe as of yesterday."

Natasha nods, frowning at the stack of papers. "Is there usable intel in all of that?"

"Yes," Fury says heavily. "We have coordinates in New Jersey. And—" Uncharacteristically for Fury, he hesitates. "Alexander Pierce put a plan in front of me not six months ago. It was—at the time, i thought it was just on the right side of hinky. After he talked me around, that is."

Steve stares down at the schematics. It takes him a minute; these are plans far beyond his technical skill. But it doesn't take engineering know-how to recognize a bunch of guns in the sky.

"What the fuck," Steve breathes.

"Is this—is this Insight?" James touches the paper, his forehead wrinkling. "I heard—they said—" He takes a deep breath. Steve doesn't think anyone else will notice the faint tremor that moves from his shoulders through his torso; but then, no one else can possibly watch him as closely as Steve does. "This would make me obsolete."

"What does it do?" Steve asks, and though he is looking at James, it's Natasha that answers.

"There's two parts. An algorithm that finds potential threats," she says. Her gaze flicks up. "All of us are targeted."

James's eyes flick away from Steve's them. "Wait—me, too?"

"All of us here," Natasha says.

James lets out a loud, explosive breath. To Steve, it sounds like relief.

"The second part?" Steve asks.

Natasha takes a deep breath. "Shield is building helicarriers, giant flying fortresses armed with thousands of guns. In combination with this algorithm, SHIELD could take out threats before they even manifest." She licked her lips. "Just, as it turns out, threats to Hydra."

"You can see why they wouldn't need me anymore." James looks up and catches Steve's eyes. "This is destruction on a scale that even ten of me couldn't accomplish. One hundred of me." He frowns suddenly, but shakes his head when Steve raises an eyebrow in inquiry. "And of course, a machine wouldn't change its mind."

"SHIELD is building the helicarriers?" The look Steve gives Fury is probably pretty accusing. That's fine; he means to accuse.

"Plans for these only crossed my desk about three months ago. I have to say, the way they were presented to me was a lot different." Fury frowns down at the paper. "If the algorithm had worked correctly, this could have given us a lot of freedom from potential threats."

"That's not freedom, that's fear," Steve says, as firmly as he can.

"Keeping threats from becoming threats is why you have people like me," James says. "For other people, there's supposed to be some kind of due process."

"Especially," Hill says, "when it's clear that there's no way to ensure that the algorithm is correct."

"What's the source of this algorithm, anyway?" Natasha asks.

Fury is quiet for a long moment. "It was delivered to me from someone higher up. Alexander Pierce."

"Secretary of State, Alexander Pierce?" Hill says faintly. "There's a good chance he's Hydra."

"I know," Fury says. "The possibility is…disturbing."

A thin line appears in James's forehead as he draws his brows together. "Show me his picture, and maybe I can tell you. If he was ever one of my handlers, I'll know."

"Dammit," Fury mutters but he's already pulling out his phone, and a moment of tapping keys later he turns around so James can see the picture on the screen.

James stiffens next Steve, his every muscle tensing. Steve already knows that Pierce is Hydra, even before James says, "Yes. He gave me orders. He gave them all orders."

"Fuck." Fury tosses his phone on the table and runs his hands over his face. Hill and Natasha look at him, and while both of them have amazingly impassive faces when they want to, Steve can see the worry written on both of their expressions. He knows that Fury has worked with Pierce closely for years, but that's not really his area of concern at the moment.

He puts his hand on James shoulder—the one that's closest, the right one—and squeezes, trying to convey comfort. "Are you all right?"

James shakes his head a little and gives a weak smile. It's not convincing at all, but he's trying, and yet another piece of Steve's heart melts. "Okay enough."

Steve desperately wants James to be able to say better than that, for him to feel so much safer and happier than just okay. But first things first, and none of that will be possible until they take care of their government-wide Hydra problem.

"The coordinates in New Jersey—what kind of site are we looking at?" Natasha scoots the paper a little closer, looking at the writing as if she could summon an answer out of the ink.

"An abandoned military base," Fury says, and then he looks at Steve.

"Camp Lehigh," Steve says slowly. "Where I went to basic." _ Where I was made, _ he thinks, but does not say.

"Now, what could possibly be of interest in an old army camp?" Hill says.

"Let's go find out," Steve says.

*

Fury and Hill go in to work the next day. In part it's to keep up appearances; in part it's to see what other information they can find. Steve can't imagine it—there are people they've worked with for years all around them, and they have no way of knowing who is trustworthy, and who is Hydra. SHIELD employs hundreds if not thousands of people, and Steve cannot believe that they are all secret Nazis.

He would much rather have the task that he does. He, James, and Natasha are on a fact-finding mission of their own. The scenery on the way to Camp Lehigh is not much different than Steve remembers after a certain point. Once they turn off the highway and the strip malls and gas stations fade away, it's just woods and gravel road out to the base. It looks the same, but different too, because it's empty and neglected and everything is faded from Steve's memories.

"Not much of interest here," Natasha says. But as Steve looks around, something nags at him.

"Army regulations forbid storing ammunition within five hundred yards from the barracks," Steve says. "This building's in the wrong place." They walk in, find the elevator, and an entire secret room.

"What is this?" James says. All the equipment looks old—or almost all of it. Natasha tries to plug a USB stick into the one piece of modern equipment, and suddenly the screens rumble to life, a multiplicity of grainy green images coming into existence.

A ratty little man in glasses takes up one screen. He names himself as Dr. Arnim Zola, addresses Natasha as Fräulein and starts talking, but honestly Steve is having a hard time paying attention to what he's saying because suddenly James—James is terrified.

"And the Asset," Zola says. "How interesting to see you've slipped our leash, Sergeant Barnes." James makes a noise next to him, a high-pitched animal whine. The whites of his eyes show all around his pupils, dilated to tiny points. "But I'm afraid it's time you rejoined the fold." He starts speaking in Russian, and James scrambles away from Steve. "Nat, shut down the speakers," Steve yells. He launches himself after James, whose breathing has sped up. His broad chest is heaving and he's backed himself against the wall, looking wildly from side to side. As Steve gets closer, he can hear James muttering,  _ no, no, no  _ over and over again.

"Steve," Natasha calls sharply. Steve doesn't look to see her; he keeps his eyes on the man in front of him. "Steve, there are multiple speakers. Get back."

"Keep shutting them down," Steve says. His pulse is thudding along his neck, in his wrists. James's eyes are fixed on Steve. Steve has never seen despair on another person's face as clearly as he sees it now. The Russian words keep coming, thudding into James like nails, but Steve keeps coming too. He reaches James while the words are still landing like daggers, like bombs. Steve slides his hands over James's ears, presses his thumbs over James's traguses to block his ear canals. If James's pulse is as loud as Steve's right now, hopefully all he can hear is the tidal pull of his own blood in his veins. Or maybe all this will do is mute the edges of the Russian words that will steal James from Steve.

If Steve's wrong, he might die. He knows that James doesn't want to hurt him. He thinks, at the edge of himself that's not calculating outcomes and trajectories, aware of Natasha behind him and James in front of him, and the fucking Zola computer that won't shut up, that if this goes horribly wrong, he's stolen James's choice from him, one of the few he's had the chance to make.

But Steve could never not try to save him. God, he hopes he hasn't done him a terrible wrong, but he could never just watch him succumb if there was even the slightest chance he could keep him from this.

He can hear Natasha cursing him, he can hear Zola still talking, but his world has narrowed down to James's face, and the feel of his own hands over James's ears. He's aware of all of the noise, and he thinks, _ If this is it, I'm not sorry for any of it _ . Time seems to slow and he doesn't see anything but James's panicked eyes, searching his face.

"Steve," Natasha yells, somewhere behind him, among smashing glass and the screech of metal against metal, and he knows she wants him to get away but he could no more do that than cut off his own hands at this point.

Steve's thumbs are firm against James's ears. He hears triumph in Zola's voice and he knows that this is it, this is where Zola thinks he'll steal James and leave the Asset—the Fist of Hydra—in his place.

This might be all Steve ever sees of James, the brave man who chose not to hurt him and tried to claw a few pieces of who he used to be. Jack, James, Sergeant Barnes—whoever he was, all Steve wants is the chance to know him more. 

He doesn't move his hands from James's ears. Instead, he leans forward, Russian words echoing around him, and presses his lips against James's. James's eyes widen even more, and Steve can't move his hands, can't stroke the skin along James's high cheekbones like he wants to, but what he can do is kiss him and hope that if this is their last moment, what he'll remember as he dies is the taste of James's mouth pressed to his.

He presses his thumbs along James's ears, because it's as close to tenderness as he can get, and then he realizes that no one is speaking Russian anymore, and the sudden quiet is a pressure around them. He's still holding his lips against James's, his fingers still following the curve of his face, and they are both breathing heavily, tensed for violence that hasn't yet happened.

Steve pulls back. James's gaze follows him, and neither of them breaks eye contact. "Nat?" Steve says into the ringing silence.

"I used an EMP pulse," she says. Her voice is not quite as steady as usual. "It seemed more important to shut him up than collect data, though I'll get what I can, and after that we should blow this place up."

"I'm all for that," Steve says. James's breathing is slowing, and his eyes aren't quite as wild. Steve lets his hands slide down his neck, squeezes his shoulders before letting go of him. His hands tingle, empty, and his lips still feel warm.

He turns around. Natasha is watching him through narrowed eyes, but he's not going to try to explain to her what he can barely explain to himself. The only person he's going to be talking about it with is James, anyway. "What can I do to help?" Steve says instead of anything else, because they are still in what is clearly a Hydra bunker, even if once it had been SHIELD.

Natasha pulls the USB stick out of the port and pockets it. "We'll see if this has anything useful on a contained system. Whatever that...Zola was, I don't want to risk letting him loose anywhere else."

"He was a scientist." James has pulled himself away from the wall and comes to stand even with Steve. His voice sounds rough, as though he has been screaming, but he hardly made a sound the whole time. "For Hydra. In World War II. He did experiments on captured soldiers. On me."

Steve can feel his own eyes go wide, and he can't help it—he reaches out to touch James's metal arm. "Is this—did he—?"

"Yeah," James says hoarsely. "He did."

Natasha pulls six small metal balls out of one of the pockets on her uniform. "Help me set the charges," she says. "This isn't enough to take down the entire structure, but we can at least make sure that this room is completely unusable."

They work quickly and efficiently under Natasha's directions, placing the explosives where they will do the most damage to the electronics rather than the room. James offers a few quiet suggestions, which Natasha accepts.

Once the charges are set, they run out of the building. After a minute or so, there's a small muffled boom, and the building shudders and settles a little off-kilter, the walls tilting inward.

Steve hates the thought of destroying the place where Peggy seems to have begun her life's work, but he hates worse the thought of that life's work perverted and corrupted from within. He wishes the problem of rooting out Hydra from where it has burrowed so deep were as easy as blowing up this one room full of computers, but he knows this is just a first step on a long path.

"At least we know where the algorithm came from," Natasha says. When Steve just looks at her blankly, she adds dryly, "I guess you were kind of busy just then, but yeah. Zola said he created it."

James shudders again at the name. Steve wants desperately to hold him. But he doesn't then, and he doesn't on the drive back to the safe house. He doesn't during the long, late-night debrief with Hill and Fury. They have plans to make, government-wide conspiracies to take down, and all of that is important and Steve is present for it and paying attention, but the whole time in the back of his mind, he is aware that James needs him. And he wants to be there for James, and also he doesn't know if he skipped over a big line in the sand. They sleep in each other's arms, but they've never kissed, if you could even call that a kiss, that desperate outpouring of emotion that Steve couldn't express in the other way. Steve would be lying to himself if he said he wasn't attracted to James. He was attracted to James when he first saw him, and the longer he's had to get to know him, to see the man who's had his life shattered and who is trying to put himself back together, the stronger the feeling has gotten. But it has to wait.

There's not much information on the USB stick. Either Natasha's EMP weapon or something Zola himself did in his death throes fried it pretty thoroughly. But there's enough to see that in the next two years, Hydra plans to build the helicarriers, implement the algorithm, and Steve can see the disquiet in Fury and Hill's eyes—they'd have let it happen.

But how to proceed, when it's the five of them against all of SHIELD'S resources? Where to strike to dismantle the entire structure?

"Send me after the head," James says when one of them brings up this question. He's been mostly quiet so far, following the discussion, but, Steve suspects, still shaken from their encounter with Zola earlier. They all turn to look at him. "Send me to kill Pierce. It's what he made me to do." His metal arm whirs as the plates recalibrate, and Steve's heart aches. 

"No," Steve says firmly, even while Natasha narrows her eyes, looking at James, and says, "Maybe."

"No," Steve says again. "We need more evidence before we do anything like that. Unless we expose Pierce's crimes, it's just going to look like a murder."

Natasha taps the stacks of paper. "We do have evidence of at least some of his crimes. We can release this to the public." 

"How?" Steve says. "Contact a journalist? Won't they need time to verify our claims?" 

"We have time," Hill says. "A year and a half, according to these plans." 

"Do you want to wait a year and a half?" Steve asks. "Do you want to give him a year and a half to find out what we're doing? A year and a half to commit more crimes, ones that we might not find out about in time to prevent?" 

Natasha clears her throat. "I was thinking more like, what if we released it to the internet? Then we can have all the journalists verifying the information, and we don't have to wait to move against him. It could be a good play—get us in front of the optics while they're surprised and scrambling. I was actually thinking that we could bring in Tony Stark."

Steve sees the advantage immediately. "Do you think he'd be able to help us find more proof at SHIELD?"

"It won't be a problem to get him to the Triskelion," Fury says. "I've had him up to discuss things in the past." He looks at the papers with an expression that Steve can't parse, but he makes a leap of intuition.

"Has Tony been helping with Project Insight?"

"Not knowingly," Fury says heavily. "I did have some questions about the engine design that he was happy to answer."

Steve can see it; Tony assessing a design problem without questioning too closely the project it was attached to. "I think he'll want to help," is all he says.

"So we get Tony into the Triskelion, expose whatever secrets we have to expose, confront Pierce, and then what?" Hills sounds a little skeptical. "Fight our way out? I'd say let's call in law enforcement, but I don't know who we can trust."

"We were on the right track before," Steve says. "Let's get the media in, get everything on camera. Let Pierce condemn himself in his own words, then let journalists see what happens."

"Start with a personal camera. If you talk to him, Fury, he might open up." Natasha chews on her lower lip thoughtfully. "I'm sure Tony can help with that too."

"And then once we have the information we need, we can keep pressing about some of the information that we already know about—about Lehigh, about Zola. About the algorithm. See what he says, what he's willing to let loose." Hill frowns, staring into the distance. “Where there's one instance of this kind of fuckery, there will be many. It's just up to us to find them and give him a chance to talk about them." 

Steve nods. He can see it, almost, unfolding in his mind: Fury confronting Pierce, Natasha and Tony going through the files, He and James and Hill... running interference, he supposes; making sure that no one interrupts, that Pierce's lackeys don't interfere with anything that they have in mind. He looks down and his hands and huffs a quiet laugh; he's not anyone's idea of the brute squad, but he's better than nothing, and frankly, he's what they've got. 

"What about me?" James says, not having followed Steve's train of thought. "If you don't want me killing Pierce, then what will I be doing?" 

Steve puts a hand on his arm. The muscles are tense beneath his fingers. "We're going to make sure no one else gets into Pierce's office, or Fury's or—wherever this goes down." He glances at Fury. "And in case he's slipperier than we think and tries to attack, we can keep him from shutting things down."

Fury raises an eyebrow, and Steve can feel the skepticism wafting off of him, but James just meets Steve's eyes and nods. It doesn't really matter to Steve if no one else thinks he can make a difference here; he and James—and Natasha—know that he can, and that's more than enough for him. 

"And me," Hill adds. Steve lets his hand fall away from James's arm, makes himself look away. "I'll help with that too." 

"You don't want to run comms?" Fury asks. That eyebrow is lifted again. 

"Don't assume I can't multi-task,” Hill says and they both smile faintly like it's an old, well-worn inside joke. "We'll set up comms—I can coordinate and hold a gun at the same time." 

Fury blows out a breath. "All right, it's not much of a plan, but it's going to change when we get boots on the ground anyway. Everyone get some sleep. We'll bring Stark in tomorrow." 

* 

Everyone goes their separate ways. It's late and it's been a long day, and Steve is exhausted. He'd be lying if he said he weren't looking forward to climbing into bed with James, but he hasn't talked to him about this afternoon yet and he doesn't know if James will even want to sleep in the same bed as him tonight. He hopes so; but there's really only one way to find out. 

He could wait for James to come to him from his own room, but he doesn't want James to feel that he is always having to go to Steve, not when Steve wants this as much as he hopes James does too. So when James starts to move to his room just down the hall from Steve's, Steve catches his sleeve. 

"Do you want to stay with me again tonight?" he asks, his pulse thumping in his wrists.

"Yes," James says, his eyes searching Steve's, his gaze dropping to Steve's lips for just a moment. "I'd like that." 

James does go to his room, changes clothes, brushes his teeth, goes to the bathroom. Steve is already cocooned in blankets on the narrow bed, but he scoots over and James moves into the warm spot. Steve isn't sure if James will welcome his touch, but James spreads his arms and Steve is so relieved to be able to move into them. 

"I wasn't sure—I was afraid I might have messed this up," Steve says, because he needs to say it and he’s been waiting for what feels like weeks but in reality is only hours to talk to James. 

"Why?" James asks. His breath ruffles the top of Steve's hair and his heart moves in a comfortingly steady beat beneath Steve's cheek. 

Steve doesn't really want to say it, but he guess he has to. "I didn't ask before I kissed you." He doesn't say it, but he thinks it: the last thing he wants to do to James is anything without asking. He's had enough people touching him without his permission, doing things to him without his consent. 

"You didn't," James says in tones of mild surprise. "You know what, Steve, considering the circumstances, I think I'll let it slide."

"I shouldn't have—" 

James's arms tighten around Steve, pull him closer. "Steve. You stopped the words. I was—I could feel them coming to take me away again, and you stopped them. That was—no one's ever—" He takes a deep breath and tilts his head down. His lips are pressed against Steve's hair and Steve can feel them move as he speaks. "I know you didn't ask, but let me tell you what I thought: I thought, if this takes me away, the last thing I'll know is this kindness." 

Steve has to swallow hard before he can speak. His words are lodged in his throat where the only thing that might loosen them is tears, but he doesn't want to cry right now. He's not sad. "That's not too far off what I was thinking too," he says into James's chest. 

"Then don't be sorry you didn't ask." He takes a deep breath, his chest moving. "You can ask me next time." The knot in Steve's throat loosens, and happiness bubbles up. He almost, almost asks him right then, but then James keeps talking. "I remembered some things while he was talking." 

"James," Steve says, as the warmth in his middle expands. "That's wonderful. He—he said your name. Sergeant Barnes. We can look you up."

"We don't need to," James says. "James Buchanan Barnes. But my friends called me Bucky." 

"Bucky," Steve says, trying it out. "Do you want me to—?" 

"Please," James—Bucky—says. "Please. It's my name, and I like to hear you say it." 

"Bucky," Steve says again, and Bucky gives a shuddering sigh beside him. 

"I was born in Brooklyn," Bucky says softly. "I had three sisters. I was drafted to fight in 1943, and I was captured in Italy in 1945." 

A shiver rolls down Steve's back. He had heard Bucky say it—had heard Zola say it—but he hadn't stopped to think about it. "We were so close. I was in Europe in 1945 too. Only I wasn't fighting—not until the very end. I was doing shows with the USO." 

"I wish you'd never had to fight," Bucky says. 

"What happened after you were captured?" Steve asks, speaking low. Bucky doesn't have to answer, of course, but Steve wants to know if he wants to tell him. 

"They were experimenting, trying to build a supersoldier, but I guess they didn't want to test it on their own men in case they ended up like the Red Skull. So they tested it on prisoners." He shudders, and Steve holds him tighter. Bucky's hand flattens along Steve's spine and rubs back and forth, slowly, as though Steve is the one in need of comfort, a warmth along Steve's spine. "I was on a train they used to transport prisoners, and the train derailed. I was caught beneath some debris, pinned by my left arm. I thought I was dying—I wasn't too sad about it at that point, to be honest—but whatever Nazi serum they gave me worked well enough to save me, even if I lost the arm. After that, they built me a new one." 

"Bucky," Steve says helplessly. "Fuck, I'm so sorry."

"Wasn't anything you could have done about it," Bucky says, and Steve lets himself entertain for a moment a world where that wasn't true—where he could have used his supersoldier's body for something more useful than fake-punching Adolf Hitler on stage over and over again. Where he could have fought to save Bucky, to take him home from the horrors that had been visited on him. It's a nice fancy, although he won't say it out loud. Bucky's right; there's no use in might have beens. 

"It blurs a bit after that," Bucky says. "It all runs together. I don't know when the brainwashing worked, when the torture stopped and they started training me. I was already a sniper. I was assigned to a unit of irregulars—wish I remembered more about them. Good guys. we ran missions for a...a woman..." he falters a little, as though uncertain of the memories, but Steve remembers Peggy talking about her commandos, her team—

"Agent Peggy Carter?" Steve says, hoping that he's right, hoping that their lives almost-touched in this way. He's not sure why he feels it would mean so much to him, but it does. 

"Yes," Bucky breathes. "Peggy. How did you know?"

"She was my friend," Steve says. "When she wasn't telling you and your team what to do, she was helping out with the supersoldier project—Project Rebirth, they called it. She was one of the two people who believed in me. The other was Dr. Erskine, who developed the serum. He died right after the project succeeded—shot by a Hydra agent." 

"I'm sorry," Bucky says. 

The loss of Erskine still stings when Steve thinks about it. "Thanks," he whispers. "After that, I got shipped off to tour with the USO, but even though I ended up an actor, not a soldier, Peggy stayed in touch. When I got sent to tour Europe, I caught up with her. I happened to be there when she got the information that Schmidt had a bomb." He can remember it so clearly; Peggy's face as she asked _ Don't you think you were meant for more?  _ "I was able to board his aircraft, the  _ Valkyrie _ , and then it turned out he had a lot more than one bomb. We fought, and I won, but there was no way to prevent the bombs from launching, so I had to put the plane down into the ocean."

"You had to?" Bucky asks. 

"I thought I did," Steve says. He can remember thinking, too, that here was finally an act that could make that hero's body he'd been given but never been allowed to use worthwhile. But he doesn't want to say that, not here, not next to someone who'd been forced to sacrifice so much more than Steve ever had. 

"And then?" Bucky says.

"I woke up in the future," Steve says. "Someone found me in the  _ Valkyrie _ , frozen in arctic ice. They dug me up and thawed me out. The serum kept me alive, but over time it degraded, and..." He snorts a laugh. "I guess it saved my life, didn't it? It made you question who I was." 

Bucky's hand stills on Steve's back, presses flat between his shoulder blades. "Then it saved us both," he says. "I wish I had known you back then. We were almost connected in a lot of ways." 

"I'm glad I know you now," Steve says. "The more I see of you, the gladder I am." 

"Steve." There's something in his voice that makes Steve look up. It's been easier to talk about all these things if he addresses them to Bucky's t-shirt, stretched over his broad chest. Bucky's looking down at him, his eyes barely a gleam in the light from the crack under the bathroom door. "Ask me this time." 

It takes Steve a second, and then he can't help smiling, that broad, happy feeling lighting up his chest. "Can I kiss you?" 

"Yes," Bucky murmurs. "Please." 

Steve props himself up on one elbow, scooting up Bucky's torso. He puts his other hand on Bucky's cheek, stubble prickling against his fingers. He leans down and presses his lips to Bucky's, and they're soft and yielding. This is a gentler kiss than before, less desperate, and Steve takes his time. He tilts his head to get a better angle, and drops his hand from Bucky's face to his shoulder, traces the line of his collarbone under the cotton of his tee. 

Bucky's metal hand is behind Steve, and he touches him with it carefully, infinitely carefully. His other hand skates up Steve's side, over the curve of his waist and the bumps of his ribs. Steve's barely breathing, focused on the touch of Bucky's fingers over his shirt, his gentle lips; every millimeter of movement feels electric. 

Steve lets out a shaky breath and parts his lips without thinking. Bucky follows suit, and almost without Steve willing it, the kiss deepens. Bucky tentatively licks Steve's lower lip, and Steve moans, then freezes. He pulls back and sets his forehead against Bucky's, willing his erection to settle down. 

"Sorry," he murmurs. 

"Why?" Bucky draws back a little. It's dark, but Steve's night vision is clear enough to see the shadow between his brows, the questioning look. 

"I don't want to...pressure you, or make you uncomfortable, or...anything that you don't want. " Steve reaches up and cups Bucky's jaw. "I don't ever want to do anything you don't want." 

Bucky puts his hand over Steve's, pinning his fingers against his cheek. Steve's chest is soft and tender, warm with the feeling that's been burgeoning within him whenever he looks at Bucky. "I know," he says, and Steve can feel the movement of his face beneath his fingers. "That's why I'll tell you if you ever do anything that I don't want."

"Promise me," Steve says. 

"I promise," Bucky whispers. 

Steve turns and kisses Bucky's stubby chin. "We should go to sleep," he says. "We've got to get up tomorrow, and it's late." 

A thickly-muscled arm hooks over his waist and tugs him flush against the warm line of Bucky's body. "Okay." Bucky presses his lips to Steve's temple and Steve feels he could float away, light with happiness even among all the worries that await them in the morning—later today, Steve revises. 

"Goodnight, Buck," Steve says softly.

"Goodnight, Steve." Bucky kisses him again. "We can—tomorrow, if you want—" He bites his lip and ducks his head, and it shouldn't make a lick of sense, but Steve knows exactly what he means. 

"Yeah. Tomorrow." Steve leans up and kisses Bucky one more time, lips closed, a chaste moment, more or less. If he's thinking about the way Bucky sighed earlier, or the way he'd arched against him, that's nothing he ever has to confess. 

Instead he lets Bucky manhandle him into the little spoon, complaining all the while that he's gotten used to his shoulder pillow and a real pillow is no substitute. But the fact of the matter is that Bucky's body is warm and solid behind his, and Bucky has never yet cared when Steve puts his colder feet against Bucky's shins; and Bucky's right arm is a warm bar across his side, much better than any weighted blanket Steve's ever tried. Steve loops a hand over Bucky's wrist. 

He's tired and tomorrow is going to be a difficult day—all tomorrows will for the foreseeable future—but right now, there is a bright, light spot in his chest as he settles in against Bucky, and as he falls asleep he identifies it: he's happy. 

*

It's a piece of cake to see Tony; all they have to do is ask. 

Natasha calls him and says she and Steve want to see him, and that's all it takes to have him set up a meeting at Stark Tower. Tony sends a car to pick them up and drive them from the safe house to New York; Fury is hesitant to use one from the SHIELD motor pool, but Tony's car is unlikely to be bugged or tracked. They don't talk much anyway, except the driver, a man named Happy, voluble even at seven in the morning. But when they respond monosyllabically, he quiets down and turns on music, pointing them to the bottled waters. Steve spends most of the drive napping against Bucky's shoulder since they stayed up so late talking. He knows everyone else can see and draw their own conclusions, but he's tired and he finds he doesn't really care all that much. He lets himself sag in the comfortable leather seats and lean against Bucky. 

The seats are very comfortable indeed, and even Steve's inexpert eye can tell that the car, a big SUV with ample room for the five of them, is top of the line, no matter how sarcastic Tony was with Natasha when she called. 

But, Steve thinks, that's very much Tony; prickly, nervous exterior and vast generosity at the same time. Tony's dropped hints that Howard wasn't the best father, and Steve can see it; busy with Peggy starting SHIELD, spinning the lie of Captain America as part of the war effort, not a dancing monkey on a stage—giving strength to the notion that the serum was his greatest collaboration rather than a waste. But as contentious as their relationship was, it hadn't been a complete disaster, and Steve's heard him mention him with something approaching irritated fondness now and again. But whatever baggage Tony is carrying, he's made himself into someone admirable, even when he's irritating, converting his business from weapons to clean energy once he saw the harm he was doing in the world. 

It occurs to Steve now that Bucky might have known Howard as well, since he knew Peggy; and then it occurs to Steve that the history Peggy and Howard made for Captain America might well not have been made up from whole cloth altogether; it might be Bucky's and his commandos exploits, repackaged and prettied up for general consumption with Steve instead of Bucky at their center. The thought makes him feel slightly sick, and he doesn't know if it would be better to look it up and find out or let himself live in ignorance. Who's he kidding? He knows he won't let it rest, but it's a thought for another time. 

Bucky gives him a sideways look as they ride the elevator up to the Stark Tower penthouse. All five of the conspirators are there, and Natasha, Fury, and Hill are talking quietly, and Steve has just gone very still. Steve gently elbows Bucky in the ribs and mouths, "I'll tell you later." 

The elevator comes to a stop, and the doors slide open. They step out into an open room with vast windows overlooking Manhattan. Everything is sleek lines and opulent modern furnishings. There's a bar of brushed metal, polished to a dull gleam, a branching chandelier, and couches and comfortable chairs scattered around coffee tables. And of course, there's Tony, standing there in torn jeans and a faded t-shirt of some band he's tried to get Steve to listen to a dozen times at least.

"Cap," he says, "you never call. You never write. You show up with the Director and the Deputy Director of SHIELD and a handsome stranger. Widow here at least checks in every once in a while."

"Hi, Tony," Steve says. "I sent you a postcard from Wilmington." 

Tony flaps his hands. "Looked sandy. I'm guessing this isn't a social call." 

Hill pulls the manila folder that contains the hard copies of all their data gathering out of her briefcase and lets it fall to a coffee table with a thump. "You guess correctly." 

"Paper?" Tony makes a grimace of distaste. 

Fury steps forward. "We have digital files as well, but right now it's imperative we only run them on a closed system."

Tony scans his face, then turns to look at Steve and Natasha. "What's going on?" 

"Can we sit down?" Hill says. "This is going to take a while." 

After they make themselves comfortable, Hill starts talking. Tony's face is incredulous when they start, but set and grim when they finish. He flips through the stack of papers, looking at the unavoidable evidence. 

"What a fucking shitshow," he says. "I don't have words." This is demonstrably true for only a moment, though, before he goes on. "How extensive is it? The Secretary of State—that's talking bad. But how many other government officials are involved? How long has this been going on? If we can't trust SHIELD, who can we trust?"

"For starters," Fury says, "we can trust the people in this room."

"As for how long it's been going on," Hill adds, "Zola was brought in as part of Operation Paperclip. The US government thought it was a good idea to bring defected German scientists on board. Zola was one of them. We have to assume that this goes as far back as he does." Tony looks as ill as Steve feels at the thought.

"We can trust Pepper," Tony says. "I'd like to bring her in on this. And Rhodey, we can trust him, too." He stacks and restacks the papers, straightening the edges until they're all lined up, much neater than anything else about this situation. "So what are we going to do about it? What's the plan?"

"Well," Natasha says. "That's where you come in." She explains about the need to expose Hydra's actions and plans and dump it all on the Internet at the same time they confront Pierce. "And I feel sure you could help us dig up even more of their dirty little secrets."

Tony stands up and paces a brief circuit of only about eight feet, back and forth. It makes Steve feel jittery himself to watch him, that small precise path in this large, open room. "You know, the funny thing is, I've already made a start on that. I've felt a whole lot less trusting since the whole—" He waves his hands around, not really describing any particular shape, but trying, Steve supposes, to encompass a complicated history without having to really address it. "—Obadiah, Iron Man thing. So when we were up in the air during the whole Loki situation, you may recall I started downloading some of SHIELD's files anyway."

"The Hydra weapons," Steve says grimly.

"Yeah, and that's not the only hinky thing I found." He shoots a glance at Fury.

Fury heaves a sigh. "Of course you did. I'd like to look at those. I can at least see which were authorized by me and which were not."

"Yeah, I can do that," Tony says. "I can get more too, if you can get me access to some of SHIELD's computer systems." 

"For the really secure systems, I'll need you to come to the Triskelion." Fury frowns. "The secured servers there are the most likely place to find evidence. They're not going to have it floating around on the company intranet." 

"Never underestimate how stupid people can be," Natasha says. "But yeah, that's probably where the juicy stuff will be."

"That's not a problem," Tony says. "Even if you don't want it to look like you brought me there." His eyes land on Fury for just a moment. "Rhodey's over there this week with some Air Force program I'm not supposed to know about. I'll just go bug him."

"I know you think Colonel Rhodes is trustworthy," Hill says, "but—"

"Rhodes is absolutely trustworthy," Tony says. "But don't worry. I won't tell him why I need to be there. I'll just ask him to invite me."

"And he'll just do that, on your say-so?" Fury eyes him skeptically

"Yeah." Tony picks up a pen from the coffee table and starts flipping it in his hand. "You can always ask me to stop by on Avengers business if you want but this way there's no connection to you."

"Avengers business can be our backup plan," Fury says.

"Fine, fine." Tony flips the pen again, drops it on the couch, and turns to look at where Bucky is sitting next to Steve. "So who's tall, dark, and silent?"

"Actually," Natasha says, glancing at Steve for a heartbeat. "He's the guy that got us chasing this leak in the first place."

"He's Hydra?" Tony barks. In a fraction of a second, the bracelets around his wrists have started to grow into the Iron Man armor, plates flicking up his forearms to the shoulder, covering the tender skin of his palms with the pulsing glow of the repulsor—pointed directly at Bucky.

Steve doesn't realize that he's moved between Tony and Bucky until he feels Bucky's hand at his hip, pulling him back. "Former Hydra," Steve says firmly.

"Just like I'm former Red Room, Tony," Natasha says.

"Just like that, huh," Tony says skeptically, but the gauntlets retreat back to his wrists.

Bucky didn't move through all of that, except to restrain Steve, and when his hand falls away, Steve moves to sit down next to him again. Tony's gaze on Steve is sharp and assessing.

"So how did we find him?" Tony says.

"Actually…" Steve darts a glance at Bucky, and Bucky gives him a tiny nod, barely a dip of his chin, so small he might have missed it had he not been watching Bucky so intently. "He found me." Steve can see Tony drawing his own conclusions, and they're probably not that far off the truth, so Steve decides to go ahead and lay it out. "He was sent to kill me, but he decided not to, and then he decided to defect and...here we are."

"Decided not to kill you, huh, Cap," Tony says. His sharp eyes dart from Steve to Bucky and back again, doubtless taking in their proximity (close) and the way Steve jumped up when he thought Tony might hurt him.

"Yeah," Steve says. "Turns out they showed him pictures of the old me and there was some cognitive dissonance when he showed up to this." He waves a hand that takes in his thin shoulders and narrow rib cage.

"And then he treated me like a person." Bucky shrugs.

"What else would he have treated you like?" Tony asks thoughtlessly.

"An experiment," Bucky says.

"A machine," Steve says at the same time.

"A possession," Natasha says, right on their heels, and then they all look at each other.

"Ooooooookay," Tony says. "Okay. I see we're all members of the fucked up science club here."

"Not me," Hill says. Fury shoots her a look. "Sir, you've been to outer space and met aliens." He shrugs.

"So what do I call him?" Tony says.

Bucky looks at Steve. Steve shrugs.  _ Bucky  _ shrugs. "Bucky, I guess."

Tony's eyebrows converge over his nose. "Bucky as in Bucky  _ Barnes _ ?" 

"Who?" Hill says. Natasha stares at Bucky with no look of recognition, but Fury looks mildly surprised, which Steve accepts as an expression of shock, and Bucky's eyebrows try to ascend to a higher plane right off of his face. 

"I—I was," he says slowly. "I think."

"They said you died," Tony says,

"I did." Bucky visibly swallows.

"You'd know about that, Tony," Fury says, and Tony stops in his eight-foot path of pacing and rolls his shoulders back.

"Yeah, I guess I would." Tony runs both hands through his hair. "I don’t guess you can tell me much about Howard."

"There's a lot I don't remember," Bucky mumbles, and tilts forward to let his hair hide his face.

"All right, all right, that's fine," Tony says. "Or, it's not  _ fine _ , but we can work with it, I guess. So I get myself inside the Triskelion, and find out what other dirty secrets SHIELD is hiding, then spill them out for the world to see. Fury and Hill will be talking to their boss." Fury makes a small, disgruntled noise. "What will the rest of you be doing?"

"I'll be with you," Natasha says. "Or your assistant, Natalie Rushman, will be." Tony makes a face like he bit into a lemon. "Even Iron Man needs back up." She grins at him, a pointed smile full of teeth.

Steve takes a breath, waves his hand between himself and Bucky. "We'll be dealing with whatever Hydra throws at us while you're wrapping up the big stuff."

"Okay," Tony says skeptically, looking at Steve. "No offense, Cap, but it might be a combat situation."

"I can handle myself," Steve says, as calmly as he can. He might not be a supersoldier anymore, but he's not useless.

"Where he goes, I go," Bucky adds.

"Wow," Tony mouths, looking from one to the other of them. Then, louder, "Why don't we all visit my labs before we go? I've got a few things I've been working on that might help us all out. I'll talk to Rhodey, see when he can fit me in, and we can plan to move then."

*

Rhodey, as it turns out, can see Tony in two days. Or at least—that's the time that he can see them that coincides with when Pierce will be in the Tower. Pierce has to know that something is happening—between the base they took down, Camp Lehigh, and Bucky not reporting back to his handlers, they've left an unavoidable trail. But Steve hopes that this direction is unexpected enough and happening quickly enough that they will still have the element of surprise.

Tony's labs are cluttered, scattered with projects in various stages of completeness and manned by robots that immediately charm Bucky out of his instinctive flinch at all the lab equipment. Steve thinks of him saying  _ an experiment _ , and suddenly he's fiercely glad that they're going to fight the day after tomorrow instead of seeing it as a harsh necessity. He can remember that if ever his resolve falters, the things that have been done to turn this man, who at his slowly-recovering core is kind and gentle, into an unquestioning tool of murder, to be pointed wherever Hydra saw fit, not even the memory of his name to anchor him to himself.

Right now the former Winter Soldier is bent over a little robot, muttering to it and watching it zoom back and forth, while Tony Stark watches, bemused.

He shakes himself out of it, and starts showing them various weapons and body armor, the near-invisible earwigs that will have them all in communication with each other.

"I'm going to need to modify some body armor for you, Cap," he says to Steve. "Want stars and stripes for old times' sake?"

"God no," Steve says. "Please, Tony. I was an actor on stage. Those things were more like pajamas. Let us never speak of it again."

"You know, they have them on display in the Smithsonian—"

"I know. Please. No stars. No stripes."

"No fun," Tony mutters. "Fine. No stripes. Now about weapons—"

"It's been a while since I fired a gun, but Nat made sure I was certified before I moved to North Carolina," Steve says. He's confident he can do it anyway; even without the bulk he used to have, his body is good at muscle memory.

"Hmm." Tony frowns and is uncharacteristically silent for a few seconds. "I—you know, I have something else you might—you know what, come with me."

They leave everyone else looking at equipment—Bucky shoots Steve a questioning look and Steve just shrugs back at him—and Tony leads Steve to a door at the back of the lab, one of several. When he opens it, it turns out to be a storeroom full of an assortment of—Steve wouldn't call it junk exactly; it looks more like abandoned projects and some things that must have been Howard's, or Tony's mother's.

Tony pulls a large round leather case. Steve can't even imagine what kind of weapon it might contain. Tony unzips it and pulls out a huge metal disc, maybe the size of a trash can lid. It's a dull, silvery gray, with concentric circles coming to a point in the center. Tony turns it over, and Steve sees that there are leather straps on the inside, and it resolves in his head as a shield. But this one isn't like the wooden one he carried on stage; this is like the one that were in the propaganda comics that they made about him, the ones where Captain America really fought Nazis instead of just fake-punching Hitler on stage.

"He made it for you," Tony says quietly. "I don't know if it was before or after you crashed, but it was for you." He holds it out and Steve takes it. It's lighter than it looks, and the metal gives a hollow ringing noise when he thumps it.

"What's it made out of?" Steve asks, instead of  _ What am I supposed to do with this _ ?

"It's an alloy of vibranium and adamantium. Not sure how he got so much of either."

Steve slides his arms into the straps and hefts it. It feels good. He's still not sure how it's meant to help on this particular mission, but it's nice of Tony to give it to him, and he says so. 

"It was always meant to be yours." Tony looks away, then back again. "That's why it's SHIELD, you know. After you."

"It's not, though," Steve says, as gently as he can."It's after the image they built of Captain America. That was never me. I was an actor raising money for the war effort."

"I guess he liked the thought of you slinging the shield around, like in the comics," Tony says. "Doing what he meant for you to do."

Steve swallows his first ten responses to that and the defensive anger that rises in his throat. Fuck what Howard had wanted— _ he  _ had wanted so much more. "Woulda been a lot different," is all he says, and then he hoists the shield experimentally and flings it at a space on the opposite wall clear of shelves or anything but exposed concrete.

The shield flies out of his hand sweet and easy, and he gets more force behind it than he meant to. It hits the wall with a metallic clang and a crunching noise and lodges in it. Brick dust crumbles around it, falling to the floor.

"Wow," Tony says after a moment. "I didn't know you had it in you."

"Sorry about your wall," Steve manages to say. It seems unbelievable that he did that, but it had felt—easy. Good, even.

"What is that?" Bucky says from the doorway. The shield slicing into the brick hadn't been particularly loud, but Bucky's hearing is on par with Steve's. He doesn't look concerned, just interested.

Steve walks over to the shield, wrenches it out of the brick, and slides it over his arm. "It's a shield."

Bucky walks closer, runs a finger over the edge, wiping away some of the dust. They're so close, Steve holding the shield up between them. "You throw it?"

"Well, I did this one time, anyway." Bucky's eyes flick up and meet Steve's and he smiles ever so faintly.

"You guys need a room?" Tony is smirking at him when Steve turns to face him. "I mean, I've got a room." Steve takes a breath to tell him to shut up, but Tony just barrels on. "If you want to play with that thing, there's a gym a few floors down."

Bucky tilts his head. "You want to try it out?"

"Yeah," Steve says. "Thanks, Tony."

Tony does something with his eyebrows that's meant to be suggestive, but Steve does his best to ignore it. It's not like he's wrong, anyway, but it's not his business.

The gym is a big open room with mats on the floor, with none of the machines that Steve expects, except a heavy bag in one corner of the room, but it seems like a great place to spar—or to throw the shield around like a frisbee. But Bucky is the perfect partner in this; he's familiar with just about every type of weapon, and while this one is unique, he has ideas about how to wield it effectively.

They toss it back and forth for a little while, just getting used to the feel of it and how it moves through the air, how best to catch it by slinging an arm through the straps. Then Steve tries to get a little fancier with, letting it ricochet off the walls. They start setting up the equivalent of trick shots, seeing how many bounces they can get in before the other catches it. It's not effortless—not on Steve's part, anyway—and before too long, he's sweating, but it's  _ fun _ , and Steve finds that he's grinning, and Bucky is too. They make a good team in this, moving in tandem, trusting in where the other will be.

Steve's not sure how long they spend throwing the shield at each other. At one point Bucky holds out his metal hand and catches the shield rather than throw it back. "Let's take a break," he says, and Steve realizes that he's panting for breath. It's not like when he had asthma, before the serum; it's just exertion. His muscles are burning and his skin is slick with sweat.

"Probably a good idea," Steve agrees. He runs through a few stretches, hoping that he hasn't doomed himself to running their mission sore and aching. "It's a strange weapon, but I think it'll work."

"Unexpected, certainly." Steve turns to see Bucky watching him stretch. Bucky's sweating too, although not as much as Steve, and it gives him a deep satisfaction to know that he made Bucky exert himself, enhanced as he is. Bucky walks over and sets the shield down next to Steve.

"You should take it," Steve says, watching him. "You're stronger and faster, and you could use it more effectively.

"Stark gave it to you." Bucky rolls his shoulders back. "Besides, I already have a chunk of metal I can use to block bullets. You take this one."

"Okay, Buck." Steve leans down and picks the shield up to settle it on his arm. It fits there easily, a comforting weight.

"It suits you." Bucky gives him a rare, full smile. "You're unexpected too."

*


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Steve and Bucky go to the Triskelion and shit goes down.

The day they're going to the Triskelion dawns cool and clear. Fury and Hill left to go back to DC the day before, to go into the office as if it were any other day, but Tony, Natasha, Steve, and Bucky are flying to DC in one of Tony's helicopters. It's ridiculous, but ridiculously useful as well, since it'll take under an hour to get there instead of four or five.

But first, they have to suit up. Tony has the Iron Man bracelets on his wrists, and Nat is undercover as his assistant, and Steve's certain that she's armed to the teeth underneath her suit. She’s also given Steve any number of nasty tricks up his sleeve: a stun baton, sleeping gas, restraints, as well as guns and knives. He’s had to find new places to put them all. 

The question of what he and Bucky would wear is another matter. There are always armed men in tac gear of various kinds in the Triskelion, strike teams and agents heading out to the field. There's no real reason for Steve and Bucky to risk injury by not wearing body armor. Bucky's is fairly standard, all black, the left sleeve modified to tear away if it impedes the movement of the metal arm—and how Tony's eyes bugged out with covetous delight when he saw it—but Steve's is another matter. It's dark blue and dull silver, striped across the chest, with a silver star over Steve's sternum. It's heavy and a little constricting, but in a good way—Steve feels protected. But—

"Why'd you put a target right in the middle of my chest, Tony?" Steve can't help but ask. "I thought we said no stars and stripes." 

Tony's expression is serious as he passes Steve a collection of leather straps that Steve can't quite parse. "I know you said that you're not Captain America anymore, but—you are, at least a little, in people's minds. It's not empty symbolism to put that there, and it might come in handy to make people think about it."

He's painted the shield, too, Steve sees—dark blue with a silver star in the middle to match the suit.

"Maybe," Steve says, not entirely convinced.

"It looks good," Bucky offers quietly. He takes the leather straps out of Steve's hands and helps him into what turns out to be a harness, magnetized on the back so he can carry the shield when he's not using it.

"Did you sleep at all?" Steve asks Tony. Tony waves his hand in a  _ maybe  _ kind of gesture.

The Triskelion is busy when they get there, bustling with people like any office building. They have the credentials that Fury gave them, and Tony is so busy being Tony that the guards scan them through perfunctorily without looking too closely at them.

Steve has never met Colonel Rhodes, and he doesn't really now, but he gets the impression of an authoritative but calm man, a counterpoint to Tony's boisterousness. Tony and Natasha follow Rhodes, presumably to a computer or a server or something where they can work their magic. Steve and Bucky follow the directions that Fury gave them, waiting until they hear Hill's confirmation over the comms— _ we're in _ —to set up guard outside of Pierce's office.

It's important that they keep Pierce from seeing Bucky. They know from the Zola program at Camp Lehigh that there is at least one set of trigger words. Pierce likely knows them, or even others, and it's not worth the risk.

Tony modified Bucky's comm unit. In the event that he hears something he doesn't like, he has only to give a whispered command in Russian and his earwig will start producing white noise that should block out anything. But that relies on Bucky hearing and identifying the start of a trigger word and starting the white noise in time to keep it from affecting him. Best to just not take the risk, Steve feels.

They stand guard in the hallway, listening as Fury and Pierce exchange meaningless pleasantries. Steve's skin itches and he really just wants Fury to get on with it. But just as Fury says, "But that's not what I'm here to talk about, Alex," Natasha's voice cuts in over the comms.

"We've got a problem," she says. "We've found so much, but we're being blocked from releasing it. Tony did a search and it looks like there's a backup Zola server actively fighting us." Next to Steve, Bucky mutters a Russian curse under his breath.

"Where is it?" Steve asks.

"It's in one of the basement server rooms," Natasha says quickly. "Tony's been able to pinpoint it as room 33 on level 2B. He's blocking our transmission—we need to shut him down as quickly as possible."

"We'll do it," Steve says. A quick glance at Bucky shows him to be pale but resolute, and he nods agreement. "Hill, are you and Fury okay if we leave you?"

"Go," Hill says into the comms.

Steve takes her at her word. He taps Bucky on the arm and they move out together, jogging towards the elevator bank. Steve swipes his badge over the buttons and keys in level 2B.

"You've got your earbuds in," Steve says quietly. He knows that he's not really alone with Bucky, he knows everyone else is listening, but he has to assure both of them.

"I'll be fine, Steve," Bucky says. He doesn't look fine—he looks like he's going to be sick—but Steve takes him at his word. Bucky would know better than he does. And even if he looks green around the gills, Bucky has seen more action than Steve ever has, even if it is horrific and only half-remembered. Steve wants him to be fine. Steve wants to protect him from any bad thing that could happen, wants to nurture the person he's building from the scraps of what was taken from him. He knows he can't promise to do that, but God, he wants to try.

The elevator stops on the 22nd floor. Bucky tenses beside Steve, and Steve himself doesn't know how he's supposed to handle standing in this small, close space with bored government functionaries and pretend that everything is all right, but then the door opens, and the situation is much worse. What looks like an entire strike team gets on the elevator hall, eight muscle-bound men with square jaws and no necks, armed to the teeth. Steve is not Natasha Romanoff, but even he can read the tension in the men, and sees them look from him to Bucky, assessingly, checking for weaknesses, and he knows that they are about to attack.

"Before we get started," Steve says, "does anyone want to get out?"

The man that Steve has pegged as the leader snorts. He's big, muscular, with a pale blond buzz cut, and hard eyes. He takes a baton from his belt, and Steve supposes that's warning enough

Steve ducks and kicks out under the legs of the man next to him as the baton whistles through the air where he just was. Bucky is already moving, and the blond man catches a punch to the jaw from Bucky's left arm that drops him like a sack of potatoes. There are still seven other men though, and it's hard to get an advantage over them in such an enclosed space. On the other hand, it means that no matter where Steve or Bucky strike, they're bound to hit an enemy.

Steve gets the shield off of his back and heaves it, calculating angles in his mind. It hits one guy on the shoulder, then ricochets off the elevator wall and clips another man with the hand he had raised to hit Bucky. Bucky catches the shield in his metal hand and smacks the guy with it. There's a loud, resounding clang, and Steve takes advantage of one man gaping at the shield to sock him in the jaw. He's not Bucky, so it doesn't take the guy out, but it does get his attention. Bucky drives the shield into one man's gut then throws it at the man now looking at Steve. It hits him in the neck and he crumples. Steve pulls the shield back, swallowing hard when he has to pull it out of the guy's neck where it hit above his tactical jacket. Blood is seeping down his neck, but Steve can't tell how bad the wound is. He's out for the count, regardless, along with the first guy he hit who's curled protectively around what is likely to be a broken shoulder. There are only two strike team members still standing. One of them surges in and gets a magnetic handcuff around Bucky's right arm. Bucky tugs against it and snarls when it doesn't give.

Steve's slides past the other guy trying to get a choke hold on him and catches the first guy's thumb, bending it backwards towards his hand. He screeches and dances back, and Steve strikes hard with the edge of his hand against the guy's windpipe. He sags, wheezing, hands scrabbling at his throat.

Bucky gets his metal arm around the magnetic cuff and yanks, ripping it free from the elevator wall. He unhooks it and slaps it on the man closest to him's wrist, pinning him against the elevator wall. The guy Steve just punched is still gasping, and Bucky balls up his right fist and punches him in the temple. He drops immediately, and Steve can't find it within himself to worry about how badly they might've hurt him.

Steve catches Bucky's eyes. Both of them are panting, and Steve can't speak for Bucky, but his pulse is beating staccato in his neck. He can't believe they just took out an entire strike team. He gives Bucky what feels like a fierce grin, and is rewarded with Bucky's answering smile.

Steve picks up the shield, and wipes its bloodied edge clean on the closest unconscious man's uniform before he replaces it on his back. The rest of the elevator ride is uninterrupted, and when they step off the elevator, Steve tosses a canister of gas that will assure they stay unconscious into the elevator as the doors close. 

"Everything okay?" Natasha says over the comms.

"Just fine," Steve says. "Got an elevator full of Hydra, though."

"Leave them for now," she says, so that's what Steve does.

He and Bucky emerge onto a maze of gray corridors filled with a low electrical hum. It's cold here, the air conditioning set low to accommodate what Steve supposes are masses and masses of servers. There's a fire safety poster that shows the exits and the layout of the floor. It's not too hard to find room 33. They jog through the hallways, the sound of their footsteps by far the loudest thing around them.

Room 33 is full of quietly humming machines, but there are no monitors or speakers, so they have no way of knowing that this is really Zola, but that's fine with Steve. He doesn't want to talk to the man, or program, or whatever he is, he just wants to destroy him. He wishes he had Nat's device that creates an electromagnetic pulse, but he doesn't, so they're just going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.

Steve sweeps a glance around the room and decides that the fastest way to disable the equipment is to unplug it all. Then they can destroy it at their leisure. He moves around the room, ripping out wires and watching with satisfaction as power lights black out and the ever-present hum of the electronics fades.

In the meantime, Bucky is not bothering with the wires but has reared back his metal fist and is crushing the server towers. Once Steve has unplugged everything he joins in, prising apart the metal casings and pulling apart the chips. It's satisfying, the wanton destruction of something vile.

"Is it working?" Steve says into his comms.

"Yes," Natasha says. "We're transmitting now."

Steve doesn't spare the breath to tell Natasha he's satisfied with that. Instead, he just keeps smashing the computers down into their component parts, and then breaking the parts into unusable pieces. It's certainly possible that there's another backup copy of Zola somewhere, but they won't be able to rebuild him from this one.

There's nothing left but wires and plastic and metal scattered on the ground when a voice comes from the doorway. "You shouldn't have done that."

Steve doesn't recognize the man in the door, but he doesn't need to. It's clear from the way that Bucky stiffens and tenses beside him that Bucky does, and that means he's Hydra. He's a muscular man, generically broad and handsome, dark hair cropped short in a way that suggests military in his background, and Steve doesn't think that it's just because he knows what he is that he finds his face to be sort of weaselly. The man looks at Steve and immediately dismisses him.

"Hydra wants their Asset back," he says to Bucky.

"I'm not anyone's asset, Rumlow." The man—Rumlow—seems taken aback, as much by the fact that Bucky spoke as by what he said.

But he recovers quickly enough. "Just give it a minute and you will be. Pierce has already given the order for us to turn on everyone not with us. SHIELD is going to be nothing but Hydra in under an hour." He starts speaking Russian, and Steve doesn't need to speak the language to know that it's the same words that Zola used, or something like them.

Bucky goes pale and murmurs something in Russian under his breath. Steve's ears are sensitive, and he hears the buzz of the white noise blocking out what Rumlow is saying, but Steve's not taking any chances that Bucky can still hear it anyway.

He lunges at Rumlow, drives a fist into his gut. Rumlow grunts in surprise, but pushes back immediately. He aims a punch at Steve's face, but Steve dodges easily. Bucky pulls his gun, almost faster than the eye can see, and gets it pointed at Rumlow. Rumlow grabs Steve and tries to put him in the line of Bucky's shot.

"Fuck," Bucky breathes. He glides forward like a striking snake, unexpected and deadly. He slides around Steve, and drives his elbow into Rumlow's ribs.

Rumlow wheezes and Steve takes the opportunity to slide out of his grasp, turning and going in for a low kick to the back of his knee. He staggers, and Bucky gets the metal arm around his neck and squeezes. Rumlow's fingers scrabble uselessly at the unforgiving metal forearm cutting off his air. Bucky leaves it in place until Rumlow loses consciousness.

"You think he was telling the truth?" Steve's talking to Bucky, but he knows that Natasha and Hill are listening, and he wants their opinion too.

"I don't know. I don't trust him at all, but I don't see any reason for him to lie." Bucky pushes his hair back behind his ears.

"Better to operate on the assumption that he's telling the truth and be wrong then not act in time," Steve says. "Hill, Nat—is there a way to let everyone at SHIELD know that they're in danger?"

"I'm patching you in to the PA system," Hill says. She sounds a little breathless, and Steve worries uneasily that he's interrupting while Pierce is trying something with her and Fury, but that's a concern for later. "You're live, Steve," Hill says.

"Attention, all SHIELD agents. This is Steve Rogers. You'd know me better as Captain America, even though I haven't been that man for a long time," Steve begins. He's not a stranger to public speaking, but it's been a while, and he's not sure what to say convince people that their coworkers—their friends—might be turning against them. He takes a breath and goes on. "There's a lot of confusion about what's happening out there, but I think it's time you know the truth. SHIELD is not what we thought it was. It has been taken over by Hydra. Alexander Pierce is their leader. The strike team and the Insight project are Hydra as well. We don't know how many more, but we know they're in the building and they're ready to strike down anyone who doesn't support their goal of absolute control. They could be standing right next to you. They have a plan for those helicarriers you're building, and they'll be able to kill anyone that stands in their way. They must be stopped. I know I'm asking a lot. The price of freedom is high; it always has been. But it's a price I'm willing to pay. And if I'm the only one, then so be it—but I'm willing to bet I'm not."

"Damn, Steve," Hill says quietly over the line. "I've taken you off the PA. We've got Pierce handled."

"We've got an unconscious Hydra agent at the basement level," Steve says. "I'm going to lock him in the server room, and then we'll get back up on the main floor and see if we can help."

"Acknowledged," Hill says.

"Did you mean all that?" Bucky murmurs.

"Yeah," Steve says, "I did." He can't make sense of the way Bucky's looking at him, can't figure out what exactly his expression means, but it doesn't matter right now. They've got things to do.

Steve shuts the server room door behind them and locks it. Rumlow will be cold and aching when he wakes up, but Steve doesn't really care. The elevator is still full of unconscious Nazis, but Steve and Bucky ride it up anyway. They hear gunshots as the elevator passes the lobby, so Steve hits the open button and the two of them scramble out of the elevator into a firefight.

The trouble with fighting secret Nazis that have infiltrated a government agency is that they don't wear uniforms; or if they do, they're the same uniforms that everyone else is wearing. It's not immediately obvious which side of the people facing off across the lobby are the bad guys and which need their help. 

"Cap!" someone yells. Steve and Bucky both swivel toward the source of the yell. A young woman in a hijab sticks her head up from behind the makeshift barricade/information desk, and it occurs to Steve that that's a pretty good indicator, actually—the Nazi side of the standoff is uniformly white. 

He and Bucky scramble across the lobby, rushing from cover to cover on their way to the woman and the people with her. Someone on the other side of the lobby shoots at them; Steve unslings the shield in one fluid motion at the same time Bucky gets his left arm between Steve's head and the opposition. Between the two of them, they protect each other until they get to the cover where the woman who called them is huddling behind the desk with about a dozen other people. Steve and Bucky slide behind the welcoming bulk of the desk, and Steve has to repress the urge to laugh wildly, not because anything is actually funny, but because they made it, and they're not dead. 

"Are you really Captain America?" the woman in the hijab says. The way she's looking at him suggests she's trying to make the way he looks now fit with the images that existed of him then, but they don't have time for him to talk her through it.

"I was in the forties," Steve says. "I haven't been in a while, but I'm here to help, and so is he." He jerks his chin at Bucky. 

"Are these really fucking Nazis?" says a guy crouching behind a swivel chair.

"Sorry to say, but yes," Steve says.

"What's the plan?" asks another woman.

Steve takes a moment to assess the layout of the atrium. It's a wide open space with a high vaulted ceiling. There are floor to ceiling windows all around, so if they can't get to a door, they may well be able to make one easily enough. The problem is that there are guys with guns pinning them down and he and Bucky seem to be the only people in their little group who are armed.

He looks at Bucky and Bucky gives him a short nod. He can see it as well as Steve can.

"We're going to draw their fire," Steve says, "and you're going to get out of here."

"What about you?" the man asks.

"Don't worry about us," Bucky says gently. "When we move, you get out of here."

Once again, Steve revels in the way that he and Bucky work as a team, even while they're fighting for their lives. Steve jumps over the desk, shield raised, and Bucky is right beside him, his metal arm up to block bullets.

And there are bullets; the bad guys don't seem to have any compunctions about shooting them. Bucky and Steve both return fire, and while Steve is not as much a sharpshooter as Bucky, he is pleased to hit his target more often than not. He checks the progress of the SHIELD employees, and breathes a sigh of relief when he sees they've made an exit.

But that's the only good news. He and Bucky are able to retreat behind the desk, but while they've taken out a few of Hydra's agents, reinforcements are arriving. A new group of about ten men in tactical gear streams into the atrium.

"Well, fuck," Steve says. He has to believe they can fight or sneak their way out, but he doesn't like their odds.

"Yeah," Bucky agrees.

"Hill, what's the situation?" Steve asks. "We're pinned down in the atrium, and more bad guys just got here."

"Hang in there," Tony says. "Help is on the way."

Steve wants to ask for an ETA, but there's a burst of gunfire aimed at their hiding spot, and he's more focused on getting himself and Bucky huddled behind the shield.

Steve is loath to fling the shield away when it's blocking so many of the bullets coming toward them. But when he gets an opportunity to bounce it off a Nazi's head, he takes it. Sometimes he ducks back behind the desk, and sometimes Bucky intercepts bullets for him, the metal arm protecting Steve's skull. Steve sees the opportunity to ricochet the shield to Bucky, and Bucky always catches it and flings it back at him. It's satisfying how well they work together, but worrying how many opponents are still arrayed against them. There are a few long minutes where Steve and Bucky are back to back, fighting hand to hand, and Steve doesn't even have enough room to do much more than bash with the shield. Bucky is so strong; Bucky is—not a machine, never that—but he's steadfast and strong and sure. 

Steve isn't, not so much; not any more. He's tiring. His muscles burn, he aches where he's caught blows, and his arms and hands hurt from absorbing the force of the blows he's been deflecting for however long this fight has taken, he has no idea any more.

Steve catches sight of more men in tactical gear running in through a door on the opposite side. "Buck," he says, and even he can hear the exhaustion in his own voice.

"I see them," Bucky says, and then, low, "I only have a couple of clips left."

Steve rolls his shoulder, because he's not giving up—how can he? they're not dead—but it doesn't look great. Still, he's holding out the hope that maybe he'll bet to hold Bucky close again when all of this is over.

"All right," Steve says, low and really just for Bucky no matter that the comms are on. "If we don't—"

"We will," Bucky says, and then there's no time to say anything else. 

Steve gets the shield up—and it's starting to feel heavy on his arm—and Bucky aims his guns. The closest Hydra guy is grinning; he thinks he's got them now, and maybe he's not wrong. Steve never wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, but at least when he did it the first time, he knew he was doing something worthwhile, if not saving the world, then at least a big chunk of it.  _ You got those people out _ , he reminds himself, but what he really wants is to have saved the man next to him, to have given Bucky more time to remember, to discover who he was when he was free to choose that person. It leaves an ache in his chest, a hollowness that hurts more than any of the physical scrapes and bruises he's picked up today. 

"There," Bucky says, and jerks his chin toward a group of potted trees to their right. Steve takes his meaning; they won't provide any physical cover, but if they can make it to them, they can break the window and maybe it's long odds, but it's better than staying here and getting mown down.

Steve nods, and raises the shield. Heavy or not, he'll hold it as long as he needs to. Bucky tenses next to him, and they break, shield and arm raised to protect them from the gunshots that immediately break out. They're both fast, and they're nearly to the potted plants when Bucky grunts and staggers.

Steve shoves up close to him, taking his weight as they make the last couple of yards, and he pulls him behind the big cement planter. They don't have long until the bad guys come investigate, Steve bets.

Bucky's face is pale and drawn with pain, and his eyes are wide. "Thigh," he says, and Steve sees it: a gunshot wound in the muscle of his thigh, the black tac fabric shiny with blood. "Go, Steve, I'll slow you down."

Steve shoots him what he hopes is an incredulous look. "Not without you, pal. We're close, we can make it."

"They'll cut us both down," Bucky says. A bullet whizzes over their heads; another hits the planter with a spray of concrete dust.

"I'm not leaving you. They're not taking you back." He feels the same sense of rightness about it as he did when he put the Valkyrie into the water, he realizes; some things are worth the sacrifice, and keeping Hydra from ever touching Bucky again is one of them.

"Steve..." Bucky opens his mouth to say something more, but then glass shatters, and Steve looks up to see a panel of the glass ceiling falling in a shower of shards into the center of the atrium. The strike forces scatter, hands up to shield themselves where they can't get away.

Two winged figures are flying from the roof of the atrium like angels in a Renaissance painting. Steve can hardly believe that they're real. The Hydra men don't seem to know whether to shoot or not, those who are not protecting themselves from the glass that's still falling on them.

"Hold your fire, Rogers and Barnes," Hill's voice comes in over the comms. "These are friendlies."

The men descend rapidly, and when a few of the strike team take shots at them, they dodge easily, gracefully.

"On your left," the closest man says breathlessly as he lands next to Steve. His wings fold away into a backpack. "Sam Wilson, pararescue."

"Steve Rogers," Steve says. "Nice flying."

"Riley," the other man says, dropping to his knees next to Bucky and pulling a medical kit out of a pocket on his belt. "What have we got here?"

"Barnes," Bucky says. "Gunshot to the thigh. Not sure if it went through."

"I'm just going to get a pressure bandage on it and we'll take a closer look somewhere safe." Riley suits actions to words, working with practiced, efficient motions. A bullet clips the edge of the planter, but neither man flinches. Wilson clips a safety harness around Steve and tests it quickly. "See you up top, loser," he says to Riley.

"Not if I get there first," Riley says, and pulls Bucky to his feet to get a safety harness around him too.

Steve wants to wait until Bucky is ready to go too, but Wilson says, "Now hang on," and takes off. His winds unfold in the fraction of a second, and it's a rush, feeling the wind of their speed. The shield is on Steve's back, offering a modicum of protection from Hydra bullets, but Wilson seems to sense when they're about to be shot at, looping and turning to avoid shots Steve isn't sure he'd have seen. In a matter of moments, they're through the hole in the atrium roof and in the open air. Wilson takes them in a wide, easy loop; waiting for Bucky and Riley, Steve realizes when he sees them emerge from the Triskelion roof.

Wilson is talking. Steve can feel the vibration of his chest, but he can't hear him. Over his own comms to Riley, Steve imagines. All he can do is hold on as they fly between the high towers of the Triskelion. It's an incongruously beautiful day to take down a government agency. Once they clear the towers, Steve can see flashing lights far below them, police cars, ambulances, news vans, helicopters circling at a distance. It's all happening; they did it. He hopes Fury and Hill, Tony and Natasha are all right.

His questions are answered soon enough; Wilson and Riley fly them to the roof of a low building far outside the Triskelion. They land gracefully, even with Steve's extra weight, and by the time Wilson has unhooked Steve from the harness, Riley is landing with Bucky. Wilson comes to help him, and they talk in low murmurs about the wound. There's a more extensive medical kit waiting on the roof; it eases Steve's heart a little to think that they were ready for this, ready for anything that Steve and Bucky might have thrown at them.

Bucky is starting to look a little wild around the eyes, and he's looking for Steve. Steve goes to sit next to him. Steve takes his hand, grips it fiercely. He doesn't think this is about the pain that Bucky must be in; this is about strangers' hands on him, probing his wound. Something sharp sticks in Steve's throat like ice, the thoughts of how unkind all the hands on him have been for decades. One person's kind touch weighed against all of that can't be much. It can't balance it out; nothing ever could. But Steve is damn well going to try.

"This should hold until we can get you to a doctor," Riley says, pressing the last piece of the bandage into place. "You're going to need to get this looked at."

Bucky's eyes go even wilder at the thought, and Steve presses his hand reassuringly. "No doctors," Bucky rasps. "Don't need 'em anyway. Accelerated healing."

Wilson and Riley trade glances. They pushed their flight goggles up to get a better look at Bucky's leg, and Steve can see that they're used to dealing with people who don't want treatment. "We're still not sure if there's a bullet in there, man," Wilson says. "Accelerated healing or not, you don't want to leave that in your body."

"If it's in there, my body will push it out," Bucky says. The echoes of experience and pain in the quiet, certain statement make Steve feel sick.

"That's one of the worst things I've ever heard," Riley says. He's got an accent Steve can't quite place; somewhere southern, he thinks. "Just because you can suffer through it doesn't mean you should. At least let me give you a pain pill."

"No doctors," Bucky says again. "No pills. Please."

Riley seems to hear the depth of feeling in Bucky's voice, too. "All right," he says after a moment. "No pills."

Perhaps ten minutes later, a helicopter lands on the roof. Fury and Hill emerge.

"Pierce?" Bucky says urgently.

"In police custody," Fury says.

"I thought we weren't bringing in the police." Steve turns. The sunlight feels good on his skin, but now that he's stopped moving and his adrenaline is dropping, he's starting to feel the ache of exertion, the pain of abraded skin and bruised flesh.

Fury sighs. "We weren't. But it turns out Stark knows someone on the force, through his prosthetics program, and he called in officer Knight."

"It worked out for the best," Hill says. "We've got a lot of Nazis to put away, and we still don't know that we've got them all."

Fury turns to Wilson and Riley. "You must be the men from the EXO-7 program that Colonel Rhodes was telling me about."

"Yes, sir," Riley says. "Pararescue."

"I wouldn't count on shipping out anytime soon," Fury says. "Looks like we might need you to stick around here for a little while."

Wilson and Riley exchange the kind of looks that say they’ve known each other long enough and well enough that they don't always have to speak out loud to know what they're thinking. "Wherever we're needed most," Wilson says.

"Come on," Hill says. "Barnes looks like he needs more medical attention."

"No hospitals, no doctors," Bucky says.

"What if we took you back to Stark Tower?" Hill says. "There's still clean up to do here, but there's no reason you couldn't go ahead back to New York. I know Tony has a doctor on staff. Whatever you're thinking it might be like, it won't."

Bucky looks at Steve with something like desperation in his eyes, and Steve says, "I'd go with you, of course."

"Of course," Fury says dryly. "You are his handler, after all."

Steve rolls his eyes, but Bucky looks relieved, so he's not going to argue the point. "Where is Tony, anyway?" Steve says. He hopes that he and Natasha didn't have any trouble with Pierce.

"He's fine," Hill says. "He's still with Natasha. It got a little tricky with some of the files she released, but it'll be okay. They'll meet you in New York."

Steve knows that he could stay and help. He thinks he could be useful; but what he wants more than anything is to take care of Bucky and make sure he's okay.

So he helps Bucky get in the helicopter, then turns back to Wilson and Riley. "Thank you," Steve says, and can only hope that he's given the word even one-eighth of the depth he feels. "We'd have been in a heap of trouble without you."

Wilson smiles, showing off high cheekbones and a tiny gap in his front teeth. "You're welcome, Cap. It's what we do."

"It's much appreciated." Steve dredges up an answering smile for him. "I hope I get the chance to tell you so again."

"Oh, you'll be seeing them," Fury says, and Riley shoots Steve a startled smile.

The Triskelion diminishes behind them as the helicopter rises into the air, Fury, Hill, Riley and Wilson reduced to toys in seconds. The Potomac is a wide blue-green ribbon beneath them, sunlight glinting off the water, the Triskelion jutting up. Steve has a moment of doubled vision—what if Hydra's plan had gone through? What if the helicarriers had risen up from their watery bays and turned their guns on the people targeted by the algorithm? He shudders and turns back to Bucky.

"How are you?" he asks through the headset.

"Been better," Bucky says, but then he smiles. "Been a lot worse, too. I'm glad we're both here."

Steve is very ready to have a chance to talk to Bucky with no one listening but each other, but since the pilot is also on the headsets, he leans forward and laces his fingers through Bucky's. Both of their hands are stained with dried blood, and Steve's at least are bruised from punching assholes, but Bucky's hand is warm against his, and he can't mind any of the rest of it too badly.

When they land on the roof of Stark Tower, there are people waiting: a stretcher, two people who turn out to be doctors, but who are—wisely—not dressed in scrubs or lab coats. A third person, Steve recognizes as Happy, who says, "Captain Rogers, would you like to go shower?" 

As soon as he asks the question, Steve immediately feels every speck of grime, every patch of dried blood, the sweat in his hair, and the ache of his muscles, but Bucky shoots him a panicked look, and Steve says, "Thanks, but maybe later, Happy. I'm going to stick with Bucky." 

He follows Bucky's stretcher as the doctors take him inside. They don't take him to a lab or a doctor's office, but directly to the room that Bucky technically had before.

"Wait," Steve says, as they start to roll him in. "He stayed with me before. We were in my room." He can feel his face heating up, but he jogs forward a few steps to ask, "Buck, where do you want to stay?"

Bucky looks around the hallway, but then his gaze settles on Steve, and he says, "With you."

The warmth of that heats Steve as the doctors pull them into his room and set up curtains and equipment to form a makeshift operating theater to extract the bullet. Steve ducks into the bathroom to wash the blood off his hands and splash his face clean. Well, cleaner, anyway. When he meets his own gaze in the mirror, he’s surprised that he doesn’t look more tired.

"Steve—" Bucky says, and then grunts as the doctor cuts away his tactical pants, leaving his leg exposed to the air.

"I'm here," Steve whispers. He sits next to Bucky and takes his hand,staying where Bucky can look at him instead of at the doctors and what they're doing to his flesh.

"Mr. Stark informs us that you do not want sedation, is that correct?" the doctor says.

"I don't want it," Bucky says through gritted teeth.

"In that case, what I have here is a local anesthetic. It will numb the area while we find the bullet and remove it." The doctor applies something to Bucky's leg, and Bucky's fingers tighten around Steve's hand. He squeezes back and holds on all the while as the doctors locate the bullet, extract it, and then stitch the wound closed. By the time they finish bandaging his leg, beads of sweat have popped up all over Bucky's forehead, and his grip on Steve is painfully tight.

Finally the doctors go over care instructions with both of them and leave with the promise to come check on him in a few hours. 

"It's going to heal up a lot faster than that," Bucky says when they're gone. He lets go of Steve's hand, and after all that time, it feels cold and strange without his touch.

"Yeah," Steve agrees. "Can I get you to bed?"

Bucky nods, and they begin the process of getting him to his feet. It must hurt terribly, but either the local anesthetic is still numbing his pain, or else—more likely, Steve thinks, if his system handles drugs the way Steve's used to—he just powers through it, only favoring his wounded leg slightly. Steve slides an arm around his waist anyway, trying to get him to lean on him. Bucky lets out a slow sigh at the touch, barely a breath.

Steve gets Bucky to the bed and makes him sit. He looks uncomfortable and unbalanced in his boxer briefs and his tactical jacket, and Steve starts unbuckling and unzipping all of its straps and buckles to get him out of it.

"I could do that," Bucky murmurs. 

"Let me," Steve says, and Bucky does. When Steve has him out of the jacket, he's left in a compression shirt, and that won't do. Steve pulls it over his head. Bucky watches him, chest bare until Steve finds a t-shirt that's much looser and softer in one of the dresser drawers. Bucky is beautiful and vulnerable, sitting there watching Steve, and isn't like Steve hasn't seen him bare-chested before, but the sight of all that muscle and skin sets an ache in his chest. Bucky spent hours today putting that body between other people and harm—between Steve and harm. Steve hands him the shirt, and Bucky pulls it over his head. He looks exhausted.

"Lie down," Steve says. "I'll just—"

"Don't leave me," Bucky says. "Please." 

"I won't." Steve finds a change of clothes for himself as well, and starts the process of stripping himself out of his tactical gear. He left the shield by the door, but the harness is still across his shoulders, and it's the first thing he removes. There are a lot of straps and buckles and zippers to the jacket and the pants and it takes a little while, but eventually he's able to get a clean t-shirt and sleep pants on himself, and it's not a hot shower, but it'll do for now.

Bucky's eyes are already half-lidded, but he turns as Steve crawls in the bed and opens his arms. Steve is careful of his leg, but Bucky makes an impatient little noise and pulls him close, and Steve feels every muscle in his body relax.

He falls asleep to the comforting sound of Bucky's heartbeat, a steady pulse against his skin.

*


	6. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath: in which our heroes have many feelings at each other while Natasha testifies at a Congressional hearing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter with the explicit sexytimes. If you wish to skip it, skip from _"Can I take your shirt off?" Steve asks_ to _Bucky's not wrong._
> 
> Before the sexytimes there is some non-sexual bathing of each other. :D
> 
> Also!!! Because I finished editing the last chapter, today is going to be a two-chapter day to get us to the end of the story! Thank you so much for reading along the way <3 <3 <3

Steve wakes to Bucky groaning and turning onto his side, and comes to full consciousness immediately. "Are you okay?" he says.

"Yeah," Bucky says. "Rolled on my leg wrong."

Steve sits up and puts a hand on Bucky's shoulder. "Can I do anything?" As he sits, he becomes aware of his own aches and pains; nothing like Bucky's, but he's stiff and sore, aching all over. What's left of his serum might have cleared away some of the pain, but enough pain remains that he feels it in every just about every muscle.

"I want a shower," Bucky says, and fuck, so does Steve. He's still grimy with yesterday's sweat and god knows what else.

"Let's get a bag taped over your bandage and see what we can do," Steve says.

He finds a trash bag and tape, and between the two of them, they get Bucky's wound covered, and although Bucky's expression suggests he thinks this level of care is unnecessary, he lets Steve fuss.

"I'll get the water started for you," Steve says, standing up from where he'd been kneeling by Bucky's leg.

Bucky looks up at him from where he's sitting on the edge of the bed. "You don't want to shower too?"

Steve closes his eyes for a long second and doesn’t let himself think too hard about it. Then he opens them. Bucky’s still pretty hurt. But still— "Yeah. Yeah, I do."

He starts the water and tests the temperature as it warms. This is Stark's tower, so of course the shower is plenty spacious enough for two, and the water pressure is excellent. He gets out towels and sets them on the shelf outside the glass door. Then he takes a deep breath and goes to get Bucky. 

"Are you ready?" he asks, and is pleased when his voice is steady.

Bucky nods and pulls his t-shirt over his head, and Steve can see bruises, already faded green, along the edge of his ribcage; but more, he sees the solidity of him, the ridges of his muscles, beautiful and functional, the injuries where he put his body between other people and harm. Steve feels fiercely tender toward him.

Steve helps him up, and walks with him as he limps toward the bathroom. The mirror has fogged up, and the air is damp and warm with steam. Bucky starts to pull down his boxer briefs and winces.

"Let me," Steve says, and tugs the fabric down over Bucky's legs, cautious and gentle over the plastic taped over his wound. Steve tries not to look at Bucky's cock, soft against his thigh; that's not what this is about, at least not right now. Bucky steps out of his underwear and Steve straightens up.

"You're coming in too, right?" Bucky looks at him with an apprehensive expression on his face, and Steve can't let him feel that way, whether he wants Steve with him or is just afraid he'll slip.

"Yeah, of course," he says, like they shower together all the time, like Steve hadn't been there for Bucky's first shower as a free-ish man.

Bucky watches solemnly as Steve strips out of his t-shirts and underwear. Steve feels self-conscious—of course he does; his body is more robustly built than he ever could have expected when he was young, but Bucky is built like Adonis, and Steve was once, but he's not anymore. He feels it acutely, that he is short, that he is skinny, and even though he tries to remind himself that everything works the way it should, no asthma, no dizziness, lungs that take in air as they are meant to, it's hard not to feel less-than next to someone as perfect as Bucky.

But Bucky doesn't know what's running through Steve's head, of course, and all he does is hold out a hand to him when Steve hesitates. Steve kicks his clothes on top of Bucky's discarded underwear, and follows him to the shower. Bucky goes in first, and throws his head back when the hot water hits his shoulders. There are multiple showerheads, so both of them can stand beneath the water at the same time. Steve maneuvers so the hot water hits right between his shoulder blades, where the tension of the last several days has made knots of his muscles. It feels good, and it feels good to share it with Bucky.

Steve didn't bring much to their little shared apartment in Stark Tower, but the bathroom is equipped with more kinds of body wash and shampoo and conditioner and masks than Steve knows what to do with. Once upon a time, he'd just washed everything with soap, and though he likes the way his hair feels when he washes and conditions it now, this is a lot more than the things he'd picked out for himself in North Carolina. The body wash seems like an easy start, and he squirts a dollop of it on to a washcloth and starts scrubbing off sweat and grime and other people's blood—some of it, he's certain, Bucky's.

"Steve," Bucky says quietly, hardly louder than the falling water. "Can I?"

Steve's heart is pounding in his chest, and his feelings have lodged in his throat, blocking any words that might want to escape. Wordlessly, he hands Bucky the washcloth. Bucky gets it under the hot water, then adds soap. His touch is gentle, so much gentler than Steve's own. He starts at Steve's shoulder, rubbing the cloth along his skin in soft, gentle circles, pressing harder along Steve's trapezius; Steve feels tension he wasn't even aware he was holding melt away beneath that touch.

Bucky brings the washcloth up, cups his metal hand against Steve's cheek and carefully washes his face with the other. Steve closes his eyes and feels the cloth trace the crooked line of his nose, infinitely gentle over the thin skin of his eyelids. Bucky runs his thumb over the arc of Steve's eyebrow, around the curve of his orbital bone. Steve feels like a flower tilting toward the sun, leaning into his touch. 

"Buck," he says, without opening his eyes. He doesn't remember the last time he was touched with this much tenderness.

The movement along his face stops at his jaw.

"Is this okay?" Bucky says.

Steve makes himself open his eyes. Bucky is close, his eyes intent on Steve's. His hair is wet, plastered to his skull, droplets clinging to his eyelashes.

"Yeah, Bucky," he says. "Thank you for taking care of me."

Bucky's smile is crooked and uncertain, and Steve reaches up to touch the corner of his lips without even thinking about it, like he could pin that smile to Bucky's face.

Bucky runs the washcloth over Steve's chest, down his arms and legs. "Can I—" he says when he gets to Steve's groin, and Steve bites his lip and nods. It's a careful touch, not a caress. Both of them are tired, and injured and Steve needs to talk to him before he can even think of taking their touches someplace sexual, but he wants so badly to press every part of himself against every part of Bucky, to let his body be a testament to how precious he's become to him in so short a time.

Steve has to remind himself of all of that when Bucky kneels in front of him and washes his legs, thighs to ankle, his hair falling in his face. He’s so intent, like cleaning Steve is a task he takes more seriously than any other. He’s beautiful and Steve wants to touch him, but also there’s a knot in his throat; he doesn’t think anyone has ever been that focused on taking care of him. 

Bucky stands and rinses the cloth, and then Steve takes it from him in turn. He wants to impart even a fraction of the consideration that Bucky took with him. Steve knows he's not a gentle person. He knows that he's all abrasive edges and dogged stubbornness. But he wants to try, for Bucky. He wants to try to be the kind of person who can treat an injured man with tender kindness, can make him feel cared for.

So he takes care. He finds a bottle of face wash and pats it into the cloth. He washes over Bucky's high cheekbones and the stubble that rasps beneath his fingertips. He soaks the cloth with body wash and traces the tendons of Bucky's neck, the strong planes of his collarbone and sternum. He washes his shoulders, taking equal care with the smooth skin of the right and the mottled scars of the left. Bucky closed his eyes while Steve washed his face but they are open now, watching Steve's hands move over his body. Steve traces down his strong arms, over the curve of his bicep down to the bone of his wrist, then tends to his fingers, to the blood and dirt beneath his fingernails, dried into the whorls of his fingerprints. The washcloth turns pink, and Steve rinses it, guides Bucky's hand beneath the water to wash away the dirt and soap.

The metal arm cleans easier, but Steve is just as gentle with it. He takes the soap to Bucky's chest, following the broad curve of his pectoral muscles where he has so often rested his head, the ridges of his ribs and abdominals, the dip of his naval and jut of his hips. He is gentle with his cock and balls, and then moves to his muscular thighs. He cleans the whole one, and then is even gentler with the injured one, not wanting to hurt it any further but needing to clean away the blood that's dried, leaving rusty splotches on his skin around the plastic and tape. Steve kneels to wash his calves and his feet, and then Bucky leans down to pull him up.

Steve sets the washcloth aside and finds the shampoo. It smells more herbal than floral. He gets a dollop of it in his hands and reaches up. Bucky leans forward, giving Steve access to his hair. Steve digs his fingers in, massaging his scalp, lathering up the shampoo. Bucky closes his eyes. His hair is so soft, even wet and soapy. Finally, Steve rinses his hair, then smooths conditioner through it.

Bucky washes his hair in turn, his fingers strong and sure, and they rinse off.

Both of them are clean and smell of soap and shampoo, warm and wet beneath the spray of water. Bucky pulls Steve to his chest and wraps his arms around him, and Steve lets himself relax into the embrace and return it. It's ridiculous, because Bucky is big and strong and muscular, and Steve is none of those things, but he wants to protect him, feels as though his arms around him are a shelter. Bucky tilts his head, and presses his lips to Steve's temple.

Steve isn't sure how long they stand there in the circle of each other's arms. The water doesn't get cold, but eventually their fingers are wrinkled and Steve is completely warm, to the very center of himself. He turns off the water and passes Bucky a towel.

They are dry and dressed by the time the doorbell chimes; the doctors have come back to look at Bucky's leg.

"If I didn't know you got this yesterday," the doctor says, "I'd have thought it was a few weeks old."

"Accelerated healing" Bucky murmurs, looking at her through a curtain of damp, clean hair.

"You'll be on your feet in no time," she comments, "although I'd like for you to take it easy for a few weeks afterwards to be on the safe side."

"I'll do my best," Bucky says.

*

There are days and days of debriefs to get through. Steve has never been a fan of paperwork, but he and Bucky both have reports to write: summarizing what happened, and what actions they took, and why.

It's all very tedious, but Steve finds he can't mind a bit of boredom after the last several days. He gets to see quite a bit of Wilson ("call me Sam") and Riley ("call me Riley") since they have reports of their own to file and since Fury seems to want to make Avengers out of them.

"You can't just requisition people out of the Air Force," Colonel Rhodes says in frustration—or amusement, Steve isn't sure which. Maybe both.

"It's an experimental program, Jim," Fury says. "I'm sure they could do a lot of good for the Air Force, but this way, they can do a lot of good for the world."

"Come on, Rhodey," Tony wheedles. "You know I could use more air support when you're off doing government stuff."

Riley and Wilson are watching like spectators at a ping-pong match. They're all in Stark's opulent living room, because Tony doesn't see why they shouldn't be comfortable while they're stuck writing reports. Not that he's writing reports; he's drinking some vile-looking green drink and watching the rest of them. 

"Where's Nat?" Steve asks Hill, who's typing up a report of her own.

Hill stops typing. "She's sequestered before her testimony in front of Congress."

This is the first Steve's heard of it. "What testimony?"

"She and Tony didn't just dump the Hydra files—they couldn't. A lot of SHIELD's secrets got put out on the Internet for anyone to read."

Steve tenses. All right, he can see how spilling state secrets would not look good for her, especially with her background as an enemy agent. "What does that mean for her?"

"Hopefully nothing. She's got an incredible lawyer, and she did what she did to prevent a much greater crime." Hill chews on her lip though; Steve doesn't know her well enough to say that it's a tell, exactly, but she had been completely calm through their takedown of the agency she worked for.

"Why her and not Stark?" Bucky says quietly.

"He doesn't work for the government." Hill sighs. "I guess neither does she anymore."

"When does she testify?" Steve asks.

"She starts tomorrow," Hill says. "I don't know how long it will take."

Later, after their reports are done for the day at least, and the entire lot of them has eaten takeout Thai and retreated to their own rooms, Steve throws himself down on the bed next to Bucky and stares at the ceiling.

"Would you mind? If I asked her to come see us at the beach after all of this is over?" Steve turns his head and presses it against Bucky's shoulder. "I bet she'll want to get away from all this for a while. I know I will."

Bucky is silent next to him for a long moment, and then he heaves himself up so quickly Steve is startled. He surges up Steve and presses a long, ardent kiss to his lips, bracketing Steve with his solid arms, the weight of his body pressing against him. "You want me to go back with you," Bucky says breathlessly. "Do you mean it?"

Steve tugs him down so he can look at him. "Yeah, if you want to. I didn't ask—I should have asked—but, Buck, I want you with me as long as you want to be with me." He takes a breath and reaches up to cup his hand along Bucky's jaw. "We haven't talked about it, and everything has been upside down and crazy, but I like you so much, and I admire you, and...I want you in my life. It would be emptier without you." Steve can feel that his face is red, his cheeks burning with embarrassment, but Bucky is smiling down at him, the corners of his eyes crinkling up with happiness, and Steve can't help but smile happily back. 

"Yeah, I want to stay with you. Beach, or wherever. I want you in my life too." Bucky traces the line of Steve's jaw with his thumb. "You're the only person I feel like a person around."

"I hope that won't always be true, but I want to be that person for you. I want to help you however I can." Steve's throat is tight, and he has to swallow before he can go on. "Remember how that waitress at the diner thought we were dating? I'd like that to be true, if you want it. But if you don't, I'll always be your friend."

"I—really? You... yes?" Bucky smiles at him helplessly, and Steve finds that he's smiling too. He can't stop.

He pulls Bucky low so he can kiss him again, and they've been careful—or maybe it's only Steve that has been careful—to keep all of their embraces chaste, to not press against whatever boundaries Bucky has—but maybe he's been too careful, because Bucky should never look this surprised at Steve wanting him.

"Steve…" Bucky dips his head and presses a kiss to the corner of Steve's mouth. "I don't know why you would want that with me. I'm not—I know I'm not all the way there, and I might never be. The things I've done—"

"You didn't choose to do them," Steve says, as firmly as he can. "I can see the person that you are when you get to choose what you do, and that's the person that I want to be with. You're a good man who's had terrible things done to him, not a man who's done terrible things."

"I'm not sure I agree," Bucky says quietly. "But I hope you're right. And I want..." He takes a deep breath and runs a hand down Steve's side almost as though he's assuring himself that Steve is still there. "I want whatever you want to give me."

Steve grabs the hem of his shirt and tugs to pull him down so he can kiss him. What Steve wants to give him is every last iota of his being. 

"Then I'll be happy wherever we are," Steve says breathlessly once they break apart. "The beach or the city, it doesn't matter."

"I hope we get to go back to the beach." Bucky's hand along Steve's side is firmer now, mapping his rib cage, his waist. "I hope they let us."

"Why wouldn't they?" Steve reaches back for Bucky, lets his hand settle on his hip. "We've done what we came here to do."

"We've proved that we're useful," Bucky says. "I don't think useful tools get to choose to rest."

"You're not—we're not tools, we're people." An unsettled feeling creeps into his chest, a breath of cold amidst all the warmth of his happiness. He doesn't want Bucky to be right. "You deserve time to rest. You deserve time to figure out who you are."

"Maybe I'll get it," Bucky says. Steve knows that he's deflecting more than agreeing, but he hopes he'll have the chance to give him that time. It's a gift that he wants to spend it with Steve, a gift that Steve wants to earn. He never wants to do anything that makes Bucky uncomfortable. The last time he was naked with Bucky, they were both exhausted and injured, and sex hadn't even entered into it. But right now, they're lying on the bed and they've been talking about their feelings, and Bucky's hand on Steve's side feels like a brand.

Bucky pulls Steve closer to him, and Steve sucks in a breath when Bucky licks along his lower lip. He runs his hand up Bucky's side over his shirt, drawing a trail over his rib cage. It feels so good to kiss him, and Steve would do it forever happily, but if Bucky wants more, then god, he does too.

"Can I take your shirt off?" Steve asks. Bucky looks at him and nods, so Steve pulls the hem up over the expanse of Bucky's chest and Bucky sits up and holds his arms up to help him.

Every time Steve sees his body, it's a revelation. He's so strong ,and while his muscles may have been honed for violence, they are a thing of beauty as well as function. Steve is content just to look for a moment, because this too is a gift.

Bucky, on the other hand, leans forward almost immediately to tug at Steve's shirt. Steve shrugs out of it, impatient with himself at the fleeting self-consciousness that he feels. Bucky takes his time too, looking down from Steve's face to take in his bare chest. Steve feels the pressure of his gaze like an almost physical force, goosebumps rising on his skin as a shiver runs down his spine.

"Can I touch you?" Bucky asks, and Steve is barely able to croak out a  _ yes _ . 

Bucky starts at the notch of Steve's hip and runs his hand up over Steve's rib cage, along the path he traced over his shirt. It feels different skin to skin, the flat of Bucky's hand a warm, soft pressure against a part of Steve's body that's usually covered. Bucky watches his own hand move over Steve's torso, stopping to press his thumb against a freckle on Steve's sternum, then moving again toward Steve's nipple. Bucky skims over it with the pad of his fingertip, a light touch that makes Steve gasp. Bucky looks up at his face, takes in his expression, then does it again, harder. Steve feels as though every nerve ending in his body is in his nipple as it hardens beneath Bucky's exploratory touch. Bucky strokes over the sensitive nub, and Steve arches up into his touch, greedy for more. Bucky obliges him, gently rolling his nipple between his finger and thumb. Steve throws his head back, aching for more, for whatever Bucky wants to give him.

"Does it feel good?" Bucky says. 

Steve has to clear his throat before he can speak. "Yeah, Buck, it feels so good. Can I show you?"

Bucky nods, his lower lip caught between his teeth, and god, Steve wants to make him feel as good as Steve does, wants his body to speak for his emotions. He pushes Bucky to the mattress on his back and runs his hands up his sides. Bucky's eyes are open wide, taking in Steve's every move, and Steve wants to be gentle with him even while he wants to take him apart. He rubs his thumbs over Bucky's nipples and Bucky gasps a barely-aspirated breath that Steve wants to hear again and again. He lowers his mouth to Bucky's chest and licks and kisses across the swell of muscle to his nipple. He flattens his tongue against the stiffened nub of flesh and Bucky moans. Steve has been hard for a while, but now his cock aches.

He licks and sucks at Bucky’s chest and neck until Bucky is panting, his body bowing up to meet Steve. Steve hooks his fingers into Bucky's waistband and gives a gentle tug. "Can I take these off?" he asks. "I want to put my mouth on you."

"Fuck, Steve," Bucky says, his voice hoarse. "Yes."

Steve pulls his pants and underwear down at the same time, eases them over his feet. Bucky is entirely naked before him, not for the first time, but for the first time with this intent. His cock is hard, flushed and wet, precome beading on the tip. Steve shucks his own pants off as well before he crawls back up Bucky's body. Bucky tracks his every move, his eyes roving across Steve's body, his eyes dark with want. Steve runs his hands up Bucky's thighs, spreading his legs wider so that Steve can settle in between them. He rubs his thumbs over the thin skin at the juncture of his thighs, stroking his fingers through the short, dark hair above his cock.

Bucky reaches down to touch Steve's hair, and Steve leans into the touch for a moment, and then he bends down and licks the tip of Bucky's cock. He tastes salty and a little bitter, and it's been years or decades since Steve did this, depending on how you count it, but he remembers enough to make it good for Bucky. Steve wraps his hand around the base of Bucky's cock and strokes in time with his mouth. Buck's cock is hot and blood-warm against his tongue, and the sounds that he makes are cranking Steve up tighter and tighter, until he is taut and humming with desire.

Steve looks up the length of Bucky's body, and Bucky's head is thrown back, his dark hair fanning across the pillow. He's still on edge with lust, but some other part of him is deeply satisfied with Bucky's reaction. He feels Bucky's cock pulse in his mouth, and Bucky says a belated  _ Steve _ , but he doesn't pull back. Bucky comes, and he swallows it down, holds his cock in his mouth until he's done.

Then Bucky's hands are on his shoulders, urging him up. Bucky kisses him fiercely, and Steve melts into his touch. Bucky's hand against Steve's cock is almost fierce at first too, fast and frantic. But then he slows down, touches Steve gently, tracing a line from the root to the head. Steve gasps and presses himself against Bucky, mouthing against his shoulder. Pleasure builds maybe quicker than he'd like—he wants to savor this—white fire burning along his nerves with the steady, inexorable stroke of Bucky's hand. He clutches Bucky to him and comes calling his name, and the two of them cling to each other as they come down from the high they chased.

Bucky moves to pull Steve onto his chest, the way they usually sleep. Steve turns his head to press a kiss to Bucky's chest, tastes the salt of his sweat.

"Was that all right?" Steve doesn't know why he wants to whisper.

Bucky's arm tightens around him. "Yeah, Steve. It was—I loved it."

"Yeah? Me too." Steve presses another kiss to the nearest available patch of skin. "We can do more of it, if you want."

"I'd like that," Bucky says, and Steve thinks happiness must be floating out of his pores.

"Me too," he says.

*

Bucky's not wrong about useful tools; Fury asks to talk to both of them the next day.

They meet him in Stark's common room over coffee and snacks and it's all very civilized. Fury lays out his objectives: a team to deal with world-sized threats. It doesn't have to be the Avengers, he says, and it won't be SHIELD since SHIELD is over with; but maybe what comes after that.

Steve can feel Bucky tense next to him, so he doesn't wait for him to say anything. "We won't be doing that," he says firmly. "We're going back to my house where we were before this."

Fury raises a single eyebrow. "Some people might say Sergeant Barnes ought to be grateful for the chance to atone for his crimes." 

Bucky sucks in a breath beside him, but Steve beats him to the chance to talk. "He was a prisoner of war for decades, tortured and brainwashed, and you want to talk about atonement? Come on, Fury. He helped take down the organization that had infiltrated your own."

Fury gives him a pointed look. "You're making a solid point, Captain Rogers, but perhaps Sergeant Barnes wants to speak for himself."

Bucky takes another breath, but this time it seems steadier, to Steve at least. "I barely remember who I am, and most of what I do remember is terrible. I don't want to fight anymore, not if I don't have to."

"You don't have to," Steve says fiercely. "And I don't have to either." He glares at Fury. "Neither of us do." 

"So you'll just go back to the beach," Fury said. It wasn't even a question.

Steve took a breath. "If there are aliens, or a government-wide conspiracy, and you need us, we'll come. But otherwise..."  _ Let us live _ , he thinks.

"In that case, Captain...I'll be in touch." Fury gets to his feet. "But if you change your mind...let me know."

*

It's a week before Natasha is done testifying. A week of staying in Tony's tower, spending time with him and Pepper, Sam, and Riley, who are also staying in some of Tony's opulent guest rooms. Steve isn't exactly surprised by how much he likes spending time with them—they're all good people in their own ways, even if he does get overwhelmed by the wall of words that Tony seems to feel the need to fill the air with at all times—but he's surprised by how good it is to have people around him. He had been content in his solitary existence before Bucky came into his life, but he missed this, he realized; being known to people, knowing them.

And they're good to Bucky, too, even Tony. They give him space when he needs it, but just treat him like anyone else most of the time. Tony tinkers with his arm, and Sam and Riley in particular are good with him. He and Sam somehow end up in a mild prank war, and the smirk that curves Bucky's lips whenever he gets the upper hand is precious to Steve. 

"You should come visit us when all of this is over," Steve finds himself saying to Sam one night. Bucky and Riley are playing pool in the corner. Tony is is mixing drinks and commentary, while Maria heckles them and Pepper sits on the edge of the couch, her shoes kicked off, talking to Bruce Banner, who Tony called in after the action was over, and Rhodey, who's also been busy with the Congressional hearings.

"Yeah, I'd like that." Sam lifts his beer and clinks the glass against Steve's. "North Carolina, right? Riley's from Virginia. Not too far out of the way."

Bucky sinks a ball and shoots Steve a quick, victorious smile. It warms Steve from head to toe, and he smiles back helplessly. 

"He seems like a good guy," Sam says, because he sees. Of course he sees; Steve is many things, but he's never been particularly subtle.

"He is," Steve says, because it's true. "He's been through a lot."

"Yeah," Sam agrees, and Steve doesn't know how much of Bucky's history he knows, but he guesses it's obvious enough that he's been through some shit.

The elevator dings; Steve hadn't thought anyone else was coming, since most of them were right there, but then the doors open. Natasha steps out, and Steve feels a hard knot inside his chest that's been there since the fight for the Triskelion loosen. She looks professional and put together, not a strand of hair out of place. She looks exhausted. She looks like his friend. 

She stops to say something to Maria, but Steve can't wait much longer than that. He excuses himself to Sam, who gives him an understanding nod, and makes his way over to her and when she turns around, he wants to hug her, but he's not sure it would be welcome. She solves the problem for him by stepping up close and opening her arms. He steps into them and wraps his own arms around her.

"I'm glad to see you, Nat," he says. "Was it bad?"

"So bad," she says against his neck. "I don't have too many secrets left anymore."

"I'm sorry you had to do it," he says. He tightens his arms around her, squeezes, then lets go and steps back.

"At least I'll never have to do that again." She summons up a smile, real even if it is a little wan. "Let's try and make sure your Bucky never has to do it either."

Steve can feel himself blush, but he wouldn't presume to argue. "I was thinking—I don't know how much you have left to do here, but maybe when it's over you could come see us in North Carolina. Take a break from the city for a while, go someplace small."

"I think I'd like that." She smiles a little more easily this time.

"I'm pretty sure I'll have a guest room to spare," Steve says.

"I'm glad that's working out for you," she says, laughter dancing around the edges of her voice, "whatever it is. Is he your boyfriend now?"

Steve fidgets with his beer bottle, peeling off the corner of the label. "We haven't exactly talked about it."

"As long as you're happy," she says, and then Maria is there, grabbing Natasha in a hug of her own.

Steve thinks about it later that night, when he and Bucky are curled around each other in their borrowed bed. They're both tired, and more lazily making out then then starting anything up. Steve likes that he's learning Bucky's body along with his mind, likes that he can tell when he wants to ramp things up or keep them slow. He thinks that as long as he has this, this time with this person he’s getting to know better and admires above all others, it doesn’t matter what they call it. 

"Buck," Steve says, and presses a kiss into his shoulder. "I'm really happy with you."

"I'm really happy, too." Bucky turns his face to Steve so he can kiss him and there, in the dark, in someone else's home, they hold each other and fall asleep in each other's arms.

*


	7. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Steve and Bucky make a home.

The house smells musty when they get back to North Carolina, like a place that's been closed up and not lived in for a couple of weeks. Steve looks at it with fresh eyes after not having seen it for so long. He thinks—it looks like what it is, like a rental house; someplace people stay, not someplace they live.

Part of it is that he just doesn't have many possessions—most of his stuff from before the war is in a museum somewhere, and getting it back hasn't been a priority this century. Besides, most of it wasn't anything he really wanted to hang onto; the person those things belonged to is gone, one way or another. He doesn't want to see things he remembers having as antiques.

And it's not like Bucky has a lot of things either; somehow, acquiring mementos hadn't been something Hydra had prioritized for their brainwashed soldier. But for the first time, Steve thinks maybe he wants to get some things, wants paintings on the walls that were picked out by him, not someone else.

They open the windows and let the house air out, even though it's cold outside. The breeze off the water smells like salt and an oncoming storm. It smells good.

Once their meager changes of clothes are put back in the bedroom they share, and Steve has stripped the sheets and changed them for new, they collapse on the sofa together.

"I know we weren't here that long," Bucky says quietly, "but this feels like coming home."

"I think anyplace could feel like home if you were there," Steve says, "but I know what you mean. Here's it's just the two of us."

He leans and cups his hand against Bucky's face, leans in for a kiss. It's slow and leisurely and feels right. He could stay here forever, he thinks, exactly right where he is; but his body doesn't let him. Steve laughs at himself a little bit when his belly gurgles and they both break apart. Bucky is smiling.

"I don't think we have much of anything left in here," he says. 

That  _ we  _ warms Steve up from the inside like he's just stepped into a sunbeam. 

"What do you say we go grab a burger or something, and then head over to the grocery store?"

"Sounds good to me." Bucky leans over and plants an affectionate kiss on Steve's forehead, and then they go.

The diner is completely unchanged—of course, it's only been a few weeks, even if it feels like it's been much longer. Marina greets them and brings over a couple of menus, and they order drinks and settle in. Bucky's got a pen and a spiral-bound pocket notebook, and is making a grocery list, consulting with Steve about what they might make for dinner. It's pleasantly domestic, and it's pleasant too when Marina stops to chat as she brings over their drinks.

"Haven't seen you boys in a little while," she says.

"We were in New York for a few weeks," Steve tells her. He doesn't really want to get into the parts that happened in D.C.

"Ooh, I hope you had a good time," she says. "I've never been."

"It was nice. We've got some friends there," Bucky says, and shoots him a tiny smile; it's true, they do have friends there.

"I'm glad to hear it," she says. "For a while there, Steve, I worried about you, on your own, the way you kept coming in here alone like that."

"Well, it's hard when you move somewhere new," Steve says, a little uncomfortably.

"I'm glad you found each other." She takes out her order pad and says, "Now, what would you like to eat?"

She takes their orders and goes and Bucky clicks the pen closed and leans forward. "Is that true? Did you really come in here alone all the time before you met me?"

"Yeah," Steve says. He shrugs a little, not exactly embarrassed, but not exactly  _ not  _ embarrassed either. "I wasn't ready to jump back into the world, I guess. I didn't feel much like letting anyone in."

Bucky's expression goes soft, maybe a little concerned. "And then I showed up."

"And then you showed up." He reaches across the table so he can put his hand on top of Bucky's, still loosely holding the pen. "I can't say I'm glad you were sent to—find me, but I'm glad I had the chance to help you."

Bucky's hand underneath Steve's twitches. "It could've gone so wrong. If I had—"

"But it didn't," Steve says firmly. "We're both here, and I’m glad."

That evening, with the kitchen fully stocked and stew in the big pot slowly making the kitchen fragrant, they go out on the porch to watch the sky turn pink as the sun sets, streaks of color reflecting off the water. For the first time in a while, Steve brings his sketchbook out, along with a selection of colored pencils. Bucky watches him draw the beach and the sky.

Bucky goes inside for a few minutes, and comes back with water for both of them and a notebook and pen of his own. He sits down on the bench next to Steve, tucks one knee under his other leg and starts writing.

Steve angles himself on the bench so that he's facing Bucky, and digs his toes under the warmth of Bucky's thigh. He turns to the next page in his sketchbook and starts to draw.

Bucky notices, of course, but he just holds still and keeps writing, letting Steve sketch him. He's absorbed in whatever he's writing, and keeps shifting minutely on the bench, but it doesn't bother Steve. He roughs in the broad strokes of his body first, the tilt of his head, the angle of his jaw, and then starts refining, laying in the details with a lighter touch. Once he's content with his lines, he starts shading. Shadows touch the dark swoop of Bucky's hair, the circles under his eyes, the curve of his brows, dark unspooling beneath his chin, along his throat. Steve roughs in the shadows of the folds of his clothes with the edge of his pencil, capturing the way they fall from his shoulders, the creases at his elbows and knees.

He's almost startled to notice that it's gotten so dark he's squinting at the page. Bucky puts his hand on Steve's ankle, wraps metal fingers around it.

"You ready to go inside?" he asks.

"Sure thing," Steve says.

Once they're inside, Bucky stretches out his hand for the sketchbook and asks, "Can I see?"

Steve hands it over almost nervously. It's not that he minds Bucky seeing, it's just he's afraid that he won't like it, won't agree with the way Steve sees him. Bucky flips back to the drawing of the beach and smiles, then turns and looks at himself. His smile fades into something more solemn, and he traces along one of the lines carefully.

"This is really good," he says. "You think maybe you'll want to paint again?"

Steve thinks he could, now. He thinks that whatever had been blocking him is gone. He thinks maybe letting Bucky in helped him realize that he could let his other friends in too, let himself acknowledge that he had been lonely, and maybe that unstoppered the well of his creative energy.

"Maybe," Steve says. "Would you model for me?"

Bucky's smile is soft but pleased. "I'd like that."

And he does. As their quiet days turn into quiet weeks, he lets Steve draw him, and then paint him, sometimes sitting still for hours, sometimes sitting next to him and writing as Steve works from a photograph.

"What are you writing?" Steve asks, one day when they're sitting together. They're got a speaker set up, and they're listening to Vince Guaraldi play piano; an instrumental album since Bucky doesn't like to listen to anything with lyrics while he writes. Steve's easel is set up in the living room, and Steve thinks, not for the first time, that it would be nice to have a room set aside for this, for painting and writing, the two of them together. A place dedicated to it, where he wouldn't have to fold up his easel every time when he was done, maybe with a computer if Bucky ever got tired of writing on paper. 

"Oh." Bucky shoots him a shy smile. 

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," Steve rushes to say. The last thing he wants to do is intrude upon the privacy of someone who's had so little for so long.

"No, it's all right," Bucky says. He sets his notebook down, stands up and stretches, then walks behind where Steve is sitting and loops his arms around Steve's torso, bending down to put his cheek against Steve's. "I started out writing down what I remembered, trying to make sense of it all. But...the last week or so, I've been making stuff up. Little stories. I don't think they're good, but it's fun."

"If you ever want an audience, I'd love to read them," Steve says.

Bucky ducks his head, his stubble rasping against Steve's cheek. "I'll let you know when I'm ready."

*

They've been back a month and a half when Natasha shows up on their door.

She doesn't call first. She knocks on the door, and Steve looks up from where he's cutting vegetables.

"I've got it," Bucky says, and Steve sees the way he tenses. His hand goes to his waistband and Steve doesn't know if it's a knife or a gun, but he doesn't begrudge either. Whatever Bucky needs to feel safe.

The door creaks open, and Steve sees Bucky's shoulders relax even before he hears him say, "Come in," and pull the door wide.

"Nat!" Steve sets the knife down and wipes his hands on the dish towel next to the stove. "I'm so glad you're here."

Bucky and Natasha exchange a complicated series of microexpressions, but Steve just slides in and open his arms. Her hair is dyed black, her fringe cut in a straight line across her forehead. He can't quite tell how bad it is, or how much she wants to let him in, but she lets him hold her for a minute, and he thinks that counts for a lot.

"You asked me to stay," she says against his shoulder.

"Thanks for coming," he says into her hair. "Turns out we do have that guest room I mentioned."

She snorts a laugh and he feels her muscles relax under his hands. Bucky meets his eyes across the room and nods, and Steve's not sure what question he's answering, but he nods too.

"Thanks for letting me crash here," Natasha says, and then she pushes off of Steve's chest. It's not often that he remembers that she is in fact shorter than him, but this is one of those days.

"I hope you're hungry." Steve takes her bag and carries it upstairs while she and Bucky debate over the best way to serve stroganoff. 

He sets her things in the guest room with a feeling of satisfaction he didn't quite expect. The room is neat and clean, sheets pulled tight in the corners, and if it's a dull rental house guest room, it's  _ their  _ dull rental house guest room.

When he comes back down, Natasha is cutting vegetables under Bucky's direction as Bucky grates cheese. Steve lets the sight of them fill his chest; he loves this, if he admits it to himself: pieces of a family that he has built from nothing. 

They sit down to eat and the food is good; french fries won out over pasta or rice, and the beef sauce is thick over the potatoes. Natasha's shoulders go lower and lower as they eat and speak of nothing in particular, and by the time they send her off to bed so they can do the dishes, she's smiling. It's not real, but it's enough of a smile that Steve takes it.

The dishes are clean, the lights are out, and the perimeter is secure by the time the two of them get to their own bed. 

Most nights they spend in languorous touching, learning each other's bodies with hands and mouths until they are frantic with desire, but tonight they just hold each other, Steve at least aware of the other person down that hall. He's drifting a little in the solid weight of Bucky's arms when Bucky leans over to whisper in his ear, "I'm glad she's here. In our home."

"Me too," whispers Steve. And he is; not only because she's Natasha and she's his—their—friend, but because they have a home for her to come to, a space the two of them have made that's big enough to let her in.

Natasha stays for two weeks. They walk along the beach, they go out to eat and stay in to cook; they paint and write, and Natasha finds a yarn store and comes back with a giant ball of purple wool and keeps them company as she knits a scarf that's a little lumpy on one end, but smooth and even-stitched by the time she gets to the other. They go to art galleries and stores that sell hand-thrown pottery, and Natasha nudges Steve's side and whispers that he should see about getting his paintings into a gallery. Steve shrugs; he's got enough money, but he likes the idea of his art out in the world where people can look at it, at least the art that's not of Bucky, so maybe one day. 

They go to the movies, a ridiculously sappy rom com that Natasha merciless mocks under her breath but seems to enjoy anyway. They watch movies and shows at home, and Natasha teases them about all the space documentaries on their watchlist, but she will happily watch high-definition animal documentaries narrated by the British man with the soothing voice for hours.

By the time she leaves, Steve feels like she fits into their little family. "You can come back any time," he says, pulling her tight against him. 

She tucks her head into his shoulder and it feels nice. "You know, I think I will."

Natasha is their first visitor, but by no means their last. Tony and Pepper come to visit, and they don't stay in the house, but in the nicest hotel nearby, and Steve and Bucky meet them at the breakfast bar and it's fine. Sam and Riley come to visit, and they are as little bothered by sharing a room as Steve and Bucky are, it turns out.

Hill and Fury call sometimes, but they’re checking in, not making recruiting pitches, and after a while, Steve comes to appreciate those calls; because the more time passes, the more he trusts they really won’t call him and Bucky to come in unless it really is important, because if they need them, they say so, and the rest of the time it’s just touching base.

"Bucky," Steve says, when they’ve been there for nine months, which, Steve thinks, is nearly a year, "maybe we should stop renting."

Bucky turns to him from the stove, where he has chicken and beets and potatoes sprinkled with turmeric stewing in their dutch oven. It smells delicious. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," he says. "I was thinking maybe we could get somewhere permanent. Somewhere with a lot of guest rooms for when our friends want to visit."

Bucky smiles, pleased and a little shy. "I'd like that."

So that's what they do; they go looking at houses and find a big Victorian-looking house on the beach, with three floors and two big wraparound porches. There's a room on the third floor with giant windows that let in the light, and Steve can see the two of them sitting there, his easel by the windows, a desk for Bucky's notebooks and laptop, with a radio for the two of them to listen to music as they work.

"It's big," Bucky says dubiously. "More room than two of us need."

"Yeah, maybe," Steve says. "More room for visitors, though."

The kitchen is spacious and has been recently updated, with marble countertops, and brushed chrome appliances. Steve can see Bucky take it in, can see him mentally putting their pots and pans in place on all the surfaces. That's when Steve knows he has him.

They make an offer the following day, and within a month they have signed the paperwork that says the house is officially theirs. Steve is delighted to spend some of his ridiculous excess of money on a home for the both of them. They haven't finished unpacking all the boxes when they get the call; one of Tony's inventions has gone wrong: an AI that has brought to life robots like the Iron Man suits. There's some more, about kids liberated from a Hydra base in Sokovia, and when Bucky hears that, his face goes dark and he's getting his kit together before Steve even hangs up the phone. 

Natasha and Clint come to pick up the two of them and fly them to Europe in a quinjet.

They've helped out before, in the ten months that they've been making a home, only once did they actually come to New York. Otherwise they teleconferenced in giving their opinions and expertise on what should happen next but didn’t participate in it themselves. But this time Tony had sounded panicked, and Steve didn't have it in him to refuse him, even had Bucky not also been bound and determined to help.

The whole thing is a shit show but they end up pulling it off. They're able to stop the AI made of pieces stolen from Jarvis before his plan really gets off the ground—literally. Apparently, he had intended to float the entire capital of Sokovia and then smash it to the ground. But it doesn't happen; Steve immediately sees a weakness in Ultron's plans, and bolstered by Bucky's practical experience, is able to direct Tony and Thor and Vision, another of Tony's AIs in a robot, but on their side this time. They save the city before it falls, and they're able to save the Maximoff twins, two teenagers, who, like Bucky, have been experiments of Hydra. They're frightened and angry, and Ultron was using them as his minions, twisting them up until they were directing their anger at everyone around them. Steve meets Bucky's eyes and the two of them exchange a look, and Steve knows in his bones that they’re going to have guests at their new home even sooner than they expected.

When everything’s over, when the Avengers offer to take the Maximoffs to America with them, in the quinjet on their way back to New York, Bucky takes off his glove and kneels in front of the two of them, spreading out his metal fingers so they can see clearly.

"Hydra had me too," is all he says.

The girl, Wanda, leans forward and takes his hand. He lets her, watching calmly as her small fingers trace over the plates.

"But you're all right now," the boy, Pietro says.

Bucky looks up, meets Steve's eyes. "Yeah, I am." Wanda lets go of his hand and he withdraws it, giving her space. "Steve and I live in a house by a beach," Bucky says. "It's far away from the city, and it's quiet. We've got plenty of room, and both of you would be welcome."

The twins exchange a long glance. "They're not going to put us away somewhere for what we did?" Petro says.

"Whatever you did, I promise I've done worse," Bucky says. "And they let me run around."

*

When Steve and Bucky come back to their home and all its unpacked boxes, the twins come with them.

"You don't have to stay with us forever," Steve had told them. "But as long as you want, as long as it takes for you to feel better, you're welcome here."

"Better?" Wanda said, a questioning arch to her delicate brow.

"Till you feel like you're not a weapon," Bucky had said.

They don't look like weapons now, Steve thinks. They look like kids, exploring the spare bedrooms on the second floor, deciding whose is whose.

"Can we paint?" Wanda asks. "The walls, I mean."

"Any color you want," Steve says. The back of his throat feels a little tight, the way it sometimes does when he thinks about what Bucky has gone through, thinking about what’s been done to them; it’s so little to want, a room the way they like it.

The twins take him at his word, and he drives them to Home Depot over the weekend so they can pick out paint chips. Wanda ends up with a terracotta shade that's nearly red, and Pietro chooses a pearly cloud gray. Steve gets bright sky blue for the studio, while they're at it, and Bucky chooses sage green for their bedroom.

Bucky and Wanda are meticulous about taping the edges, and Steve picks up the rollers and brushes as easily as if he were painting watercolor, while Pietro is fast but not slapdash about getting the paint up. Since they didn't have everything moved in yet, it's easy to push the furniture away from the walls and drape it with thrift store sheets. The house stinks of paint, but the walls are so much brighter and more cheerful that Steve doesn't mind at all leaving the windows open for the fresh air to dry the paint.

They take Wanda and Pietro out to look for things to hang on their walls, for furniture that they can choose. There's still plenty of the house to furnish, anyway; all of Steve's furniture had been rented along with the previous house, and he and Bucky had only really gotten as far as their bedroom and the living room before the whole Sokovia situation happened. Bucky wants Steve to draw or paint everything that goes on the walls, but Steve feels a little weird about that, like it would be self-centered to have nothing except his own art on the walls. But Wilmington and their little town on the outskirts of it are not lacking for galleries, so they go and find local artists that they like. It means there are a lot of pictures of the water and of boats to choose from, but there are other things as well.

Wanda finds the little yarn store in between the galleries that Natasha had visited and signs up for knitting classes. She knits in the evenings while they watch movies or shows, or in her room, listening to audiobooks in English and Sokovian. 

Wanda and Pietro go online, too, and Wanda ends up with her walls full of art nouveau prints and animated movie posters, while Pietro has  _ Star Wars  _ posters in black frames. The night the paint is dry and they hang the pictures up, Steve asks the twins about what kind of food they eat in Sokovia, and he ends up making lamb wrapped in cabbage leaves stewed in a tomato sauce. Well, he and Bucky and up making them, with a lot of commentary from the peanut gallery. It feels like a milestone, getting the kids settled in, making this house feel like their home too.

It turns out being held in captivity by evil Nazi scientists isn't very good for the GPA. Wanda and Pietro don't have a lot in the way of school records, but Steve looks into it and finds that they can take tests to cover whatever school years they've missed.

There are other classes too; Wanda and Pietro both Skype with some people in a school in upstate New York who teach children with abilities like theirs. Wanda especially finds it helpful as she tries to figure out the extent of her abilities. 

Steve and Bucky can’t really help with that, but for their regular classes, they make their best effort. Steve never made it past high school himself, but Bucky checks out a stack of books from the library on math and science and grammar and attacks them with grim determination; in no time he's helping them study for the GED.

Steve asks him, one night when he's helped them work through trigonometry, after the kids have gone to bed, "How did you get so good at all this math?"

Bucky is quiet for a moment, and then he looks up at Steve and reaches out and curls his hand along the jut of Steve's jaw. "I must have known a lot of math at some point. It doesn't feel like I'm learning something new, but remembering something I've forgotten. I think—" He swallows, hard.

"I'm an idiot. You'd have had to have done all manner of calculations to set up your shots." Steve had never been a sniper in World War II—he hadn't even been a foot soldier in World War II—but he knows that without a lot of targeting equipment like Bucky can use these days, he'd have had to have done his calculations on paper in his shooting blind; or else been the sort of prodigy who could do it all in his head.

"This is a better use for that knowledge," Bucky says. "Much, much better."

"Yeah." Steve scoots a little closer on the couch so he can burrow into his side, and Bucky puts an arm over his shoulder and squeezes. "A lot better."

*

They fly to New York for Thanksgiving with the Avengers. They're all there, Steve's friends—Bucky's friends now, too, and if they don't know Wanda and Pietro well enough to count them as friends yet, well...they will. Steve's sure of it. Sam and Riley are there, laughing with Rhodey, and Tony and Pepper are fussing over the table as a team of chefs lays out an inordinate amount of food. Bruce and Thor are having a conversation about quantum physics that Steve finds impenetrable, although Bucky listens with fascination. Maria and Natasha are discussing something in a corner, and Clint seems to have taken Wanda and Pietro under his wing, making sure they don't feel excluded. It's the people Steve cares about most, all together in the same room.

The food is plentiful and good, and they stay the weekend. It's good to spend time with everyone, no missions to plan, no fight they have to get to, just Steve and his team—his family, in this century—spending time together. It's nice.

Christmas is nice too. Steve and Bucky talk about it, and they think about inviting the Avengers to their house for the holiday. It would be a tight squeeze, but even with the twins, they have two spare rooms, and it's not like there aren't hotels—which Tony and Pepper would doubtless be staying in anyway. But as great as Thanksgiving was, the idea of spending time with just the four of them is appealing too. So that's what they do.

They get a tree, a fragrant, six-foot fir, and put it in the living room. They don't have a lot of ornaments, but they string twinkling lights through the branches and go buy a few from one of the shops that has some made by local craftspeople. The colored lights shine through the window when they sit on the porch in the evenings—not for very long, because it's cold; but long enough to appreciate the picture that it makes.

Bucky spends the week leading up to the holiday cooking and baking. They've both learned to cook, but while Steve is competent at it, Bucky is really the chef of the two of them. He likes to do research—they have a low shelf of cookbooks in the kitchen now, and he has bookmarked several websites, and is just as likely have the tablet in front of him as a cookbook open—and try out new things. When he does, Steve, Wanda, and Pietro are allowed to give it a thumbs-up or thumbs down, but they have to be honest; if they say they like it and they don't really, they might see it again.

For Christmas, Bucky goes all out. The twins helped him make gingerbread cookies while Steve watched, and all of them decorated them together. He's baked loaves of rosemary bread, and made crescent rolls for Christmas morning. There's a rack of lamb in the fridge with some kind of rosemary rub, fingerling potatoes, green beans, and some sort of spinach and cheese thing that he's made before and Steve loves, a pie to go along with the cookies, and while Steve and the twins have helped some, it's really Bucky in charge of the whole show. Steve is looking forward to eating himself into a food coma.

They wake up Christmas morning and Steve is allowed to make eggs and bacon and potatoes to go along with Bucky's crescent rolls. They make coffee, and Bucky puts ice cream and bourbon in the blender to make a very festive sort of milkshake that everyone gets a glass of. They have stockings full of small, silly things, with an orange in the toe, because that was always a treat for Steve at Christmas.

Steve has bought them all tickets to see a musical in Charlotte in January, but he really thinks it's a present to himself: the experience of all of them together. He and Bucky have a leather duster for Wanda that she's been eyeing in a shop for months but saying it's too expensive, and they have running shoes for Pietro that Tony reinforced so that they won't burn up when he really turns on the speed. Wanda has knitted them both scarves, and a woolly hat with a bobble for her brother. Pietro has gotten everyone books: a series of science fiction novels for Bucky, a beautiful history of art for Steve, and some Sokovian novels for Wanda that appear to be historical romances, although since they're in Sokovian, Steve's not sure. For Bucky, Steve went to a stationery store and picked out three of the prettiest leather bound notebooks they had, a fountain pen, and small bottles of colorful ink. Bucky's face lights up when he sees them.

Wanda tries on the coat, which fits just as perfectly as it had the five times she tried it on in the shop, and spins in a circle, smiling. "Bucky," she says just as he's handing Steve a smallish rectangular wrapped gift. "I have one more present—but you don't have to accept it you don't want to or if it makes you uncomfortable."

Bucky looks at her, still smiling. He has his scarf wrapped around his neck and looks happy and cozy.

"This is more than enough," he says.

"I know—you told me about the trigger words." Wanda looks nervous, but Bucky doesn't look mad or upset, although his smile dims a little. Wanda takes a breath and goes on. "I think I can help you. I can make it so no one could ever control you again."

Bucky takes a deep, shaking breath. "You could do that?" Steve knows that if there's anything in the world that Bucky is frightened of, it's this; to have his choices taken away, the person he's clawed himself back to reduced to nothing more than a tool in the hands of their enemies. To be turned against the people he cares about is his worst nightmare. Steve would know; he's been next to him as he's woken from it too many times.

"I have talked about it with Ms. Grey, and I want to try." She gives them both a small smile. "You've given us so much."

"A home," Pietro says, his silver hair sticking out in all directions from under his new hat.

Steve has to clear his throat. "As long as it won't hurt him."

"I'd never," Wanda says.

"Even if you did, it would be worth it," Bucky says. Then he smiles again. "But we can talk about that later. Steve, I have one more thing for you."

He passes Steve the last gift almost hesitantly. It feels like a book, and it turns out it is a book. Steve peels the last of the paper away and sees that Bucky has had his short stories and poems printed up and bound. He's let Steve read a few of them, but this is a lot of them, and it's a real physical book containing Bucky's thought and feelings, that Steve can pick up and read any time he likes; the closest thing to telepathy most people will ever get, unless they're like Wanda.

His throat is tight and his heart is full as he picks it up. "Buck, this is...it's beautiful. Thank you for sharing this with me." He leans over and pulls Bucky into a quick hug. Bucky pulls him close. 

"You don't have to read it if you don't want to, but I thought—" Bucky murmurs against his ear.

Steve plants a kiss on Bucky's neck. "Of course I'm going to read it. Just try and stop me."

And he does, right then and there. He takes his bourbon milkshake to the armchair and reads, as Bucky snorts a pleased laugh at him. Bucky and the twins play with their new stuff for a while—Steve hears the sounds of whatever game they're playing—but he just sinks deeper into the worlds Bucky has made.

The stories and poems are all different genres, and different characters, and different plots, but the more Steve reads, the more he sees a connective thread. All of Bucky's stories, one way or another, are about love and its power.

The realization makes Steve's heart skip a complicated beat, almost as though he still had arrhythmia, because he knows that Bucky is a gentle, loving man, but it's another thing to see proof of it on the pages. Bucky had so much taken from him, he'd had to fight so hard to get even some of it back, and he still loved. He still saw the significance of love. Steve knows that already; he sees it in their life every day, but he's never thought about it quite like this.

Steve reads for hours, every story, every poem. By the time he's finished, the house smells amazing.

Bucky walks over to him just as he gets to the final page, just as he reads  _ the end _ .

"Steve?" Bucky says.

"It's beautiful, Buck." Steve has to swallow hard around the emotion choking his chest. "They're all beautiful, and after the kids go to bed I'm going to tell you my favorite part about every one."

Bucky's smile lights up his whole face, and he holds out a hand to help Steve up. Steve takes it, Bucky's skin warm and dry against his own, and lets himself feel the love that surrounds him.

He puts the book down on the table next to the armchair. It's not  _ the end,  _ except in the pages of the book; for them, it's only the beginning. 

-o-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it! Thank you for coming on this ride with me, as a simple bingo prompt turned into technically a novel. Your enthusiasm for this story has made it such a delight for me--thank you. <3 <3 <3


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